Oceans are rapidly becoming the world’s rubbish dump. Every km of ocean now contains an average of 74,000 pieces of plastic. A ‘plastic soup’ of waste, killing hundreds of thousands of animals every year and leaching chemicals slowly up the food chain. In Holland, scientists researching the decline of the fulmar bird found plastic in the stomachs of 95% of all samples; In Germany, chemicals leached from plastic have been found to affect the reproductive systems of animals, while in California, conservationists are seeing increasing numbers of whales and dolphins die agonising deaths, their guts blocked with rubbish. What will be the long term impact of this ’plastic pollution’? Can anything be done to clean up our oceans?
The Coca-Cola Company sells 4000 plastic bottles around the world every second. What should we make of their promises of sustainability? And is recycling the solution?
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Plastic is everywhere: as a trash vortex in the ocean and as a microplastics in our food chain. We investigate why mankind has not come up with a solution for this problem yet.
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99% of the plastic that should be floating in the oceans is missing. Even accounting for the plastic that washes up on beaches or is trapped in arctic ice, millions of tonnes has simply disappeared.
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