As anticipated the festive period saw what seemed like most of the Mozambique and South African residents descend upon Tofo, this small, idyllic beach-fronted market town in a tucked away corner in Mozambique, where I now call home. The population of our tiny beach town ballooned to almost four times its usual capacity. There was people, music and braai aromas littering the entire Tofo area. Houses I’d not even noticed before, usually derelict, became teeming with life and light at all hours. 6,000 people were reported to have covered the beach on New Years Day. It’s a wonder the electricity held out at all, and the water stayed running (mostly). I feel Tofo survived its own self-inflicted ‘holiday destination of Mozambique’ annual fate rather well. The biggest impact of the sudden population boom, however, was the amount of rubbish. Wrappers, plastic bottles, cans and the like are unfortunately a pretty common sight usually in Tofo, and Mozambique in general. Multiply the population a few times, unsurprisingly Tofo got a bomb off dross, detritus and debris dropped all over it. There are several recycling points around the town, but how much they’re used, raided and/or collected is questionable. And where does the majority of this waste end up in a beach-fronted town? Of course; the ocean. From afar, Tofo beach looks so pure, pristine, like paradise. Unfortunately, this description is not totally true to reality. It is now much more commonplace for most beaches everywhere to have more than a little plastic lining the high tide mark, or at least have remnants of family picnics be blown about the place. From flip flops to plastic chairs, buckets to microbeads, it seems everything that’s plastic ends up in the ocean eventually. Since we invented plastic over a century ago, it has become an established part of human life. It’s in our houses, our vehicles, our food is wrapped in it, our clothing is covered in it. Unfortunately, though, so are our oceans. It is a really awfully, terribly catastrophic problem. And for the scary part; the statistics. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), at least 8 million metric tons of plastic gets leaked into the oceans annually. That’s the equivalent of dumping one garbage truck into the ocean every minute. If no action is taken, this is projected to increase to two garbage trucks per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050. If everything continues as usual, there will be 1 ton of plastic per 3 tons of fish by 2025, and, by weight, in 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. As I said, a terribly catastrophic issue is at play. WEF state that 90% of plastics are produced from fossil fuel feedstocks, accounting for 6% of global oil consumption. That is the equivalent to the entire global aviation sector, and it is only projected to rise. Here's an interesting observation: If Shakespeare drank out of a plastic bottle and chucked it in the ocean, it would still be there for at least another 50 years from now (granted you probably couldn’t drink out of it any more, if you really wanted to, but the sentiment still stands). So there it is; it takes hundreds of years for plastic to degrade. It’s because the bonding between the long chain of atoms within plastic are stronger than naturally-occurring, organic materials. Therefore the bacteria that would normally break down stray materials, cannot easily break these bonds apart. It is widely believed that plastic never entirely degrades at all, only is broken down to microscopic parts called microbeads, which certainly don’t just disappear. Instead, they are ingested by animals or embedded in soils, and remain a teeny plastic particle forever, growing in numbers on whatever substrate they may find themselves, becoming more and more toxic in the meantime. When pulled into the ocean by high spring tides, heavy rainfall or just being chucked in, plastic finds itself being sucked into great swirling gyres of ocean. The most notable and largest vortex of plastic is the great Pacific garbage patch. It is rather well known these days, taking up the equivalent of twice the size of Texas. There are 5 of these swirling plastic vortex’s in the world's oceans, and scientists have calculated that combined these 5 patches contain up to 150 million tons of plastic. All hope is not lost, however. There are some noteworthy entrepreneurs that have been dreaming up solutions to this rather sizable issue. THE OCEAN CLEANUP PROJECT Boyan Slat was just 17 when he founded the Ocean Cleanup Project in 2013. After a feasibility study and crowd funding campaign, the Ocean Cleanup is now the largest and most successful organisation planning on clearing the plastic in the ocean. The concept is a giant ‘V’ shaped floating barriers, which sit in the ocean letting the swirl of the vortex pass through it. The lighter-than-water plastic then gets caught in front of the barriers, channeled to the centre of the ‘V’. Meanwhile, the screens under the surface catch the smaller submerged plastics, allowing wildlife to safely swim beneath the screens. All of these plastic pieces are then extracted and stored by a central platform at the centre of the ‘V’, to then be recycled back on land. A North Sea prototype has been deployed in June 2016 23km off the Dutch coast where it will remain for one year. Following this, the team plan on deploying the Pacific pilot project in 2017, all going well, allowing the full-scale Pacific cleanup to commence in 2020. It’s an incredibly exciting project and, given the success of this most recent dutch experiment, is looking like this is the best solution we have to reversing the damage in the oceans. PLASTIC-EATING MICROBES WILL SAVE THE EARTH (AGAIN) Another field of study into reducing plastic is actually employing tiny little worker bacteria and fungi to break down plastics in landfills. By 2016 we’ve been shown independently by Yale and Kyoto University that this rerun of a ‘plastic-eating microbes will save the world’ story may actually have some clout. Bacteria and fungi have obviously evolved with natural materials, all the while coming up with a tool kit of biochemical processes to break down dead matter and digest it. Plastics have only existed for the last 70 years, which is nowhere near enough time for our bacterial friends to find the right process to digest it. Or so we thought. Turns out Japanese scientists, after spending 5 years trawling through plastic waste, have found and named (Ideonella sakaiensis - catchy, I know) the microbe that can do the job. It uses 2 enzymes, of which the Japanese team have also managed to identify - this is the new progression previous ‘microbes-solve-plastic-pandemonium’ stories have lacked. Their ability to reconstitute plastic to their starting materials and digest them, producing zero toxins, certainly give them the credentials for any recycling and ‘plastic cleanup’ initiative. It all sounds so ideal, but here’s the catch: they’re slow, fussy eaters - it takes them around 6 weeks at 30 degrees for a thumb-sized piece of plastic to be digested. We are reassured, though, that with a bit of genetic-twiddling, it may be possible for these microbes of bacteria and fungi to be a prospective solution for our plastic addiction. Most innovations have been just a little too fragmented, and it’s because the standards and practices of plastic production are uncoordinated and unregulated. Plastic bag bans and recycling initiatives certainly have their place locally, but any policy aiming to reduce plastic dependence has been, thus far, simply thrown down by the self-regulated plastic industry. SO WHAT CAN WE DO?
Here in Tofo, a local recycling scheme is in place. Much more could be done, however, to reduce reliability on plastics in Africa, especially of plastic bottles for fresh, clean water (as you’ll find yourself some extra, possibly unwanted minerals coming out of the tapwater here) and general waste. Two easy, daily feasible solutions for everyone worldwide could be to simply reduce your dependence on plastics, and disposing properly of the plastics you do use. Pick up the loose veggies instead, and put them loose in your basket, do they really need that silly little bag to sit in for the journey home? Could you use canvas bags instead? On a larger, community level, setting schemes to prevent plastic getting into the ocean in the first place and by collecting what we can of what does get in, hopefully we might be able to make some progress towards a sustainable plastic-use future. And wouldn’t that be nice.
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AuthorJenny was born in Dorset, and now is living in Mozambique. She participates in long-distance triathlon and rowing challenges. She has a conservation degree, and is currently working toward her masters degree studying the Stingrays of Mozambique. Archives
June 2017
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