Nowhere has it been more clear how destructive the plastic problem has been than in the sea.
A lot of reports have come out about sea animals that choke on the wide variety of plastic waste that is often illegally dumped in the oceans. This is because the sea creatures often mistake plastic items for food and as expected, their digestive systems are unable to process it and they end up starving to death as they are unable to take in real food.
The only way to remove the plastic that has been ingested by a marine animal is by surgery. But more often than not, ingesting plastic has been a death sentence because there often isn’t enough time or opportunity to spot a marine animal in need.
One sad occurrence that underlines this situation is a dead sperm whale that washed up on the shores of the Wakatobi National Park near Kapota Island in Indonesia.point 251 |
Inside the whale’s 9.point 24 | 5-meter long body was found 6 kilograms of plastic in its stomach.point 79 | It included 115 plastic drinking cups, 4 plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, and two pairs of flip-flops.point 166 | What makes this even more tragic is the fact that it wasn’t the first time a dead whale has been found in this condition.point 270 | 1
While a lot of measures an strategies have been introduced to help reduce the amount of plastic that makes its way into the sea, what makes the situation challenging is the amount of illegal dumping that is going on. It doesn’t matter if a government declares the dumping of plastic in the sea as against the law if there are any number of people and companies willing to go against the law to save on money.
A tweet by WWF Indonesia had a breakdown of what was found in the whale and the weight of each. It said: “Hard plastic (19 pieces, 140g), plastic bottles (4 pieces, 150g), plastic bags (25 pieces, 260g), flip-flops (2 pieces, 270g), pieces of string (3.26kg) & plastic cups (115 pieces, 750g).”
Because of its advanced state of decay, officials could not determine if it was indeed the plastic waste that caused the death of the animal.
A staggering sixty percent of all plastic waste found in the oceans comes from just five countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand.point 367 |
A UN report in 2017 found that each year, around 10 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean.point 83 | Even assuming all dumping of plastic waste has been put to a stop right this minute, the clean-up of all the plastic that is already in the oceans will take decades.point 218 | 1
And it’s not just a problem for marine animals. The situation affects humans in a very real way.
The wastes that are dumped into the oceans don’t just kill the animals. They stay inside the animal’s body and resides in the meat of the fish like a slow poison, a poison that we eventually end up eating on the dinner table.
It’s a challenging situation, for sure, but giving up is not an option. We simply cannot afford it.
Replaced!