Plastic washed ashore on a beach in the proximity of Rome “Leonardo da Vinci” Airport
Washed out on our coasts, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolds further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from the land we stand on.
It is estimated that 8.8 million metric tons of plastic waste is dumped in the world’s oceans each year. A lot of plastic debris in the ocean breaks down into smaller pieces, it is ingested by marine life, and it is thought that a significant amount sinks to the seabed. But a lot of it just floats around, accumulate at the center of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground.
A wide variety of anthropogenic artefacts can become marine debris; bottles, plastic bags, fishnets, clothing, lighters, tires, polystyrene, containers, plastics shoes and various wastes from cruise ships and oil rigs are among a myriad of man-made items commonly found to have washed ashore, all sharing a common origin: us.
A walk on a beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world, the statistics are growing, staggeringly. Tons of plastic that can vary in size are discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans.
The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or floating at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris are made of microscopic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean. They are not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it, and ultimately are ingested by marine animals and zooplankton. This plastic micro-pollution, with its inherent toxicity, bears grave consequences on the food chain.
