There May Soon Be More Plastic in the Oceans Than Fish
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| The environmental impact of plastic
waste is already staggering and getting much worse |
| By Gregory Barber |
MotherJones |
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| Rich Carey/Flickr |
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Discarded plastic will outweigh fish in the
world's oceans by 2050, according to a report from the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation. That is, unless overfishing moves the date
up sooner.
The study, a collaboration with the World Economic Forum, found
that 32 percent of plastic packaging escapes waste collection
systems, gets into waterways, and is eventually deposited in the
oceans. That percentage is expected to increase in coming years,
given that the fastest growth in plastic production is expected
to occur in "high leakage" markets—developing countries where
sanitation systems are often unreliable. The data used in the
report comes from a review of more than 200 studies and
interviews with 180 experts.
Since 1964, global plastic production has increased 20-fold—311
million tons were produced in 2014—and production is expected to
triple again by 2050. A whopping 86 percent of plastic packaging
is used just once, according to the report's authors,
representing $80 billion to $120 billion in lost value annually.
That means not only more plastic waste, but more
production-related oil consumption and carbon emissions if the
industry doesn't alter its ways. |
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The environmental impact of plastic waste is
already staggering: For a paper published in October, scientists
considered 186 seabird species and predicted that 90 percent of
the birds—whose populations have declined by two-thirds since
1950—consume plastic. Plastic bags, which are surprisingly
degradable in warmer ocean waters, release toxins that spread
through the marine food chain—and perhaps all the way to our
dinner tables.
Most of the ocean's plastic, researchers say, takes the form of
microplastics—trillions of beads, fibers, and fragments that
average about 2 millimeters in diameter. They act as a kind of
oceanic smog, clouding the waters and coating the sea floor, and
look a lot like food to small marine organisms.
In December, President Barack Obama signed a law banning
microbeads, tiny plastic exfoliaters found in toothpaste and
skin products that get flushed into waterways. But the MacArthur
report urges plastic producers to step up and address the
problem by developing products that are reusable and easily
recycled—and that are less toxic in nature—and working to make
compostable plastics more affordable.
The 2050 prediction is based on the assumption that global
fisheries will remain stable over the next three decades, but a
report released last week suggests that may be wishful thinking.
Revisiting fishery catch rates from the last 60 years, Daniel
Pauly and Dirk Zeller of the University of British Columbia
found that the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization
drastically underestimates the amount of fish we pluck from the
seas. The United Nations relies on official government data,
which often only captures the activities of larger fishing
operations. When the British Columbia researchers accounted for
smaller fisheries, subsistence harvesting, and discarded
catches, they calculated catches 53 percent larger than
previously thought.
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| There was a glimmer of hope in the findings,
though: The researchers write that fishing rates, after peaking
in 1996, declined faster than previously thought—particularly
among large-scale industrial fisheries. Whether that trend will
hold is another story. |
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