Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 1: Dust and AshesSea trashThe sea is one kind of ‘away’. The North Pacific sub-tropical gyre is a vast area of theocean where the wind hardly blows. It is called a gyre because the atmosphere andocean circulate – very slowly – towards the centre. So things that drift in to the edge– on the wind or in the sea – tend to get stuck in the system. In the days of sail, it wasknown as the doldrums and terrified sailors who feared being becalmed with neverenough wind to sail out again. It remains outside of the main shipping routes so hardlyanyone goes there. In 1997, US ocean researcher Charles Moore took his boat throughthe gyre. He expected to see pristine ocean but “was confronted, as far as the eye couldsee, with the sight of plastic … In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, nomatter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottlecaps, wrappers, fragments” [2003].The gyre has become the world’s unseen dump as ever more rubbish accumulates.Over time, the plastic breaks up into smaller pieces but, even when microscopic insize, it is still plastic. The result is a plastic soup mixed up with the plankton that is thebasis of the ocean food chain. There is now more plastic than plankton in the gyre.The North Pacific gyre is the biggest of six subtropical gyres covering about 40% of theworld’s oceans. All are accumulating trash. But sea trash is not restricted to the gyres.Greenpeace [2006] reports that plastic can be found floating everywhere in the world’soceans, including the arctic and Antarctic seas, and litters the world’s coasts, even thecoasts of remote and uninhabited islands. Much of it does not float on the surface. Itis either suspended in the water or sinks into the sediments on the sea bed, particularlyin coastal areas. The trash enters the food chain via filter feeders and fish and birds thatmistake plastic objects for food. The toxicity is enhanced because plastic absorbs andconcentrates other chemicals polluting the seas. Toxicity is then further concentratedup the food chain until it returns to people in the fish on the plate.Some 20% of sea trash is from shipping. The rest is from the land. Much of it is blownor washed off streets and waste dumps by wind and rain. Condoms and other itemscommonly flushed down the loo are washed out of overflowing sewage works. Andthe plastics industry commonly spills ‘nurdles’, the sand-like plastic pellets from whichthey make products. Greenpeace comments, “Although plastic pellets are one of theleast visible forms of plastic pollution, it is apparent that they have become ubiquitousin ocean waters, sediments and on beaches and are ingested by marine wildlife” [2006:- 12 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation