Category Archives: Plastic Pollution Articles & News

The carcasses of five dolphins and more than 30 sea turtles have been found along the western coast of Sri Lanka after the burning of a cargo ship near the capital Colombo, sparking concerns that the accident is devastating marine wildlife in the region.
After the Singapore-flagged X-Press Pearl caught fire on May 20 near the harbour, some oil, chemicals and plastic pellets leaked into the sea that is home to several species of large marine mammals. These include the non-migratory blue, humpback and pilot whales; spinner, spotted and bottlenose dolphins; and thresher and whitetip sharks.
There are also hundreds of sea turtles and millions of reef fish in this part of the Indian Ocean, popular for marine tourism, wildlife research and fishing.

Sri Lanka is seeking an interim claim of US$40 million (S$53 million) from X-Press Feeders, the ship’s operator, as compensation for firefighting expenses from May 20 through June 1.
Sri Lanka’s Marine Environment Protection Authority (Mepa) has yet to fully assess the cost to wildlife and marine environment.
The Sri Lankan navy said the blaze was caused by the vessel’s chemical cargo, which included more than 22 tonnes of nitric acid and other chemicals, most of which was destroyed in the fire.

For now, there is no oil spill, said Dr Darshani Lahandapura, chair of Mepa. But the burnt-out container ship is sinking, with its bottom touching the shallow seabed.
Environmentalists fear that if oil and any remaining chemicals like sodium dioxide, copper and lead spill out, the rich marine life in the region could be at stake.
In the past week, Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation said carcasses of spinner dolphins, humpback dolphins, turtles and eels have washed ashore in coastal regions up to Colombo and Kosgoda. The department’s director-general Chandana Sooriyabandara said tissue samples have been taken from the dead animals and teams were holding necropsies.
Colombo-based conservation biologist Ranil Nanayakkara said: “The carcasses that wash ashore could be only a fraction of total deaths. Most dead animals will sink to the bottom, be eaten by others or be moved by water currents around the world. We have to do studies, and fast, to know what is happening.”
Based on data the government has released, Dr Nanayakkara has ruled out nitric acid, as it is “not potent enough” to kill animals. “It’s not clear what exactly is the cause of death: toxic chemicals or the vibration from the two or three explosions on the ship,” he said.
Marine biologist Asha de Vos, the founder of Oceanswell, Sri Lanka’s first marine conservation research organisation, warned that not all deaths can be attributed to the ship accident. “It’s important for us to remember that animals die all the time, and their carcasses can be found at sea or washed on beaches throughout the year. Only the necropsies can tell us the cause of death,” she said.
However, all the scientists are worried about the tonnes of plastic pellets covering many beaches, such as Kalpitiya, like heaps of toxic snow. The fish-egg-like pellets are stubborn pollutants that choke marine wildlife and block the digestive tracts of fish that swallow them, thus starving them.
Mr Nanayakkara is afraid that if the pellets travelled in the water columns up the coast, they could wreck the pristine seagrass beds in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, the habitat of dugongs, sharks, rays, seahorses and shrimps, among other creatures.

New York – The ocean or ‘blue’ economy represents some $2.3 trillion in market goods and services, from fisheries to tourism to shipping; if the ocean were an economy, it would be the world’s fifth largest.  But our ocean faces unprecedented threats from pollution, overfishing, habitat loss, invasive species and climate change. Collectively, these ocean threats represent nearly $1 trillion in annual socioeconomic losses and threaten the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. The global agenda for moving towards sustainable ocean use is captured in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, Life Below Water, and its ten targets.  Four of the SDG 14 targets came due in 2020, another in 2025, making SDG 14 among the most ambitious of all the SDGs.

It is widely understood that achieving the SDG 14 agenda requires moving away from business as usual towards transformational change in the responsible sectors. Such transformations need to include the introduction and scaling up of innovative approaches – technological but also policy, regulatory, economic and financial. Towards this end, in 2020 UNDP with support from Sweden and Norway, launched the Ocean Innovation Challenge (OIC), seeking to identify, finance and mentor innovations that are replicable, scalable, sustainable and potentially transformational.

On Tuesday, June 8, World Oceans Day, the United Nations Development Programme hosted “A Conversation with the 2020 UNDP Ocean Innovators” which highlighted a suite of inspirational ocean protection and restoration projects UNDP is supporting through the Ocean Innovation Challenge.  These innovations were selected through the OIC’s 2020 global call for proposals on SDG 14.1, reduce marine pollution, that received over 600 submissions from a wide range of public, private and civil society stakeholders.

Featured speakers included Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Deputy Prime Minister Per Bolund of Sweden, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on the Ocean Ambassador Peter Thomson, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, and Norad Director General Bård Vegar Solhjell. His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon of Norway moderated a conversation with the first cohort of Ocean Innovators on marine pollution.

Crown Princess Victoria emphasized the interconnectedness of the ocean SDG with all the other SDGs: “For a very long time the seas have given us humans what we need to survive. But now, with climate change, pollution, and overfishing we are at a point where the ocean depends on us. It is time for us to give back before it is too late.”  Ambassador Thomson commended the OIC for supporting innovations “that are inspired by nature and act for nature’s well-being”. Deputy Prime Minister Bolund underscored the importance of the OIC approach to “ocean and coastal restoration and protection (that) sustain livelihoods and the blue economy”.  UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, noted that “the Ocean Innovation Challenge is precisely the kind of initiative which understands that it is in human ingenuity that the greatest hope for the 21st century lies.”

The discussion moderated by Crown Prince Haakon explored the inspiration and ambition behind each of the Innovators.  Three OIC projects, in Comoros, Costa Rica and the Maldives, seek to introduce national level Extended Producer Responsibility schemes to close the loop on ocean plastics pollution by shifting the burden from consumers and municipalities to the plastics producing companies.  A project in Southeast Asia will work with the textiles sector to reduce microfibre shedding from textiles manufacturing.  A partnership with Duke University will create a globally accessible database of best practice in plastics pollution reduction policy approaches.  In the Philippines, Fortuna Coolers is introducing cooling boxes manufactured from waste coconut husks as a substitute for highly polluting polystyrene coolers.  Lastly, two projects are combating ocean nutrient pollution, one through the application of digital tools to optimize wastewater treatment in Cape Verde, the other through the sustainable culture of kelp seaweed as an organic substitute for highly polluting and carbon intensive industrial fertilizer.

In his closing remarks, Norad Director General Solhjell expressed his optimism for humanity’s capacity for transformational change. He underscored Norway’s significant commitment to innovation for ocean sustainability: “To make transformational change, innovation is key and that kind of transformational change is what we need to deal with the great challenges that we are facing with the ocean. To have transformational change you need innovation. And that is the key reason we have partnered with Sida and with UNDP to create this challenge.”

In March 2021, the OIC launched its second call for proposals on sustainable fisheries (SDGs 14.4, 14.7, 14.b); at the end of the call in early May, close to 300 proposals had been received.  Following a detailed and rigorous vetting process, UNDP’s 2021 Ocean Innovators will be announced in late 2021; interested parties can find out more at the OIC website and on social media:

www.oceaninnovationchallenge.org

@UNDPOceanInnov

#UNDPOceanInnovators

https://www.facebook.com/OceanActionHub

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ocean-innovation-challenge-371782199/

https://trello.com/b/QCeFFqIo/undp-oic-2020-ocean-innovators-and-2nd-call-for-innovations

Almost half of the litter found in the world’s oceans is plastic made by takeaway food and drinks, new research has shown. In the first comprehensive study of its kind, researchers from 15 institutions in 10 countries analysed 12m data points from 36 global data sets on litter pollution, discovering that plastic accounts for 80 …

Continue reading “Ocean largely littered with takeaway food and drink items, study finds”

<!– –> Plastic is increasingly ubiquitous, even in remote ocean waters. These microscopic pieces were found in the Arctic Ocean. ELISA MARTI and ANDRES CÓZAR/University of Cádiz By Tania RabesandratanaJun. 10, 2021 , 6:01 PM Plastic winds up everywhere—from the top of Mount Everest to remote corners of Antarctica. Every year, millions of tons of …

Continue reading “Research on ocean plastic surging, U.N. report finds”

G7 leaders should act to protect the world’s oceans by pushing for agreements on plastic pollution and protecting the Arctic and Antarctic, experts said.
Politicians meeting in Britain this week were also urged to treat poverty as a cause of pressure on natural resources.
The UK is pushing a green agenda at the G7 in the run-up to the Cop26 climate summit, which it is hosting in November.

Leaders are meeting in Cornwall, south-west England where, scientists said, the impact of rising sea levels is being felt.
At a briefing on Wednesday, scientists called for leaders to treat the oceans as a key part of climate change.

“I would say to the G7, we need to have much more ambitious targets on marine conservation,” said Prof James Scourse, a marine scientist at the University of Exeter.
“We need to strengthen the Antarctic Treaty that preserves the Antarctic continent.
“We need to strongly strengthen international agreements on non-exploitation of the Arctic, which is opening up because of sea ice and so on.
“I would also say that we need to look very carefully at trawling and put a complete moratorium on deep marine mining.”

The Carbis Bay Hotel, near St Ives, Cornwall, is hosting the G7 gathering. Bloomberg

Oceans in danger
Scientists called for the effects of climate change in the oceans to be highlighted, as well as the more visible ones on land.
“The invisibility of a problem gives politicians cover for not doing anything about it,” said Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at the University of Exeter.
“We need to make this problem of what’s going on in the oceans much more visible.”
Prof Scourse said climate change already “baked in” to the oceans was bound to continue for a long time because it took about 1,000 years for global waters to completely mix.
“We can see the impact of climate change on terrestrial systems on the land, in the habitat in which we live as human beings,” he said.

The ocean is telling us that it’s under a lot of stress
Heather Koldewey

“But many of the most profound and immediate impacts that register the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing are oceanic.”
Prof Heather Koldewey, a senior technical adviser at the Zoological Society of London, said the G7 had an “enormous potential to really make a difference at this summit”.
Prof Koldewey called for a global treaty on plastic pollution to tackle what she said was one of the most visible aspects of damage to the ocean.
In one experiment, scientists are releasing bottles off the coast of Cornwall to provide data on how marine pollution spreads.
This data could feed into tsunami and weather warning systems, and attempts to understand the effect of climate change, Prof Koldewey said.
There is a “real opportunity” for the G7 to address the effects of climate change on the ocean, she said.
“That’s including things like overfishing, the half of the ocean that’s currently under very limited protection and looking at a high-seas treaty that’s robust.
“These are all things that we can actually do something about – a global treaty for plastic pollution and others. There is this real opportunity to act.
“We’re asking people to listen to the science and also to listen to the ocean. The ocean is telling us that it’s under a lot of stress.”

A volunteer collects plastic waste and debris on the French coast. AFP 

Poverty and climate crisis
The UK this week promoted a commitment by 80 countries to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030.
The target was backed by G7 environment ministers at an online preparatory summit last month.
Hans-Otto Poertner, who co-chairs a working group of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the G7 could help to bring about a social transformation that was needed to address the causes of climate change.
“If we bring the countries together and look at the countries with the largest and strongest economic power, they are the ones that actually should also lead on that transformation,” he said.
“The equality issue and the poverty eradication issue, that is so much the root cause of the pressure on natural systems.
“We need transformation in the industrial systems, in the economic systems, and in the way society functions.”