The World Dumps 2,000 Truckloads of Plastic into the Ocean Each Day: Here’s Where a Lot of It Ends Up
ENVIRONMENT, 29 Apr 2024
Dilip Simeon | After the Truth Shower – TRANSCEND Media Service
23 Apr 2024 – Loji Beach, nestled in a bay in West Java, is especially prone to plastic pile-ups. Ocean currents sweep the waste into the bay where it gets trapped in and ends up on the sand. “There’s no real community living here. There’s not a proper road to the beach, so there’s no local people cleaning it up properly, like you see in other parts of the country,” said Edu Ponces, a Barcelona-based photographer. “Loji Beach is telling us something: if we decide not to do more about plastic waste, this is what the sea will give back to us.”
Photographs and video by Edu Ponces/RUIDO Photo / Story by Angela Dewan, CNN
The western coast of Java in Indonesia is popular with surfers for its world-famous breaks. There’s a majestic underwater world to explore, too. But it’s impossible to surf or snorkel without running into plastic water bottles, single-use cups and food wrappers.
Fishermen separate fish from plastic waste collected in their nets. The separation of plastic and the sorting of the catch is an increasingly laborious task as the amount of waste increases.
The garbage sometimes forms islands in the sea, and much of it washes ashore, accumulating as mountains on the beach. The world produces around 400 million metric tons of plastic waste each year. Every day, 2,000 truckloads of it is dumped into the ocean, rivers and lakes.
Despite global efforts to give plastic products longer lives, only 9% of them are actually recycled. Most plastic waste goes into landfills or is shipped to places like Indonesia and other Southeast Asian nations, many of which are already drowning in their own plastic pollution.
Clearing beaches of litter in Indonesia is no small task. The country is the world’s second-biggest producer of plastic waste. As the world’s longest archipelago — stretching over the same distance as London to New York — Indonesia has a vast coastline and three times the amount of sea surface area than land, making fishing an industry that 12 million people rely on.
Without adequate state services to keep the beaches clear of litter, fishing communities are on the front lines of the clean-up….
https://edition.cnn.com/webview/interactive/2024/04/climate/plastic-pollution-ocean-cnnphotos
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Dilip Simeon: My blogs are non-commercial. I believe strongly in the power of ideas; and am opposed to ideological tyranny and the control of the mind by dictators or totalitarian movements of any doctrinal inclination whatsoever. My blogging has been devoted to fostering an informed and non-polemical debate in India and globally, about the crucial concerns of our time. Here’s a thought that I consider profound: ‘It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow human beings.’ (M. K. Gandhi). The title, After the Truth Shower, is from a poem I wrote for a friend.
Tags: Marine pollution, Oceans, Plastic Pollution, Pollution
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