Environment
A time to
Man has proven excellent at
making technical advancements to ease our lives with less than excellent side-effects for other species...
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What do shrink-wrap, polystyrene and derelict fishing gear have in common? They are three of the most insidious types of environmental and marine plastic pollution, and create complex, intractable problems on a global scale. The marine industry is taking the lead in tackling all three of them – with funding and support from 11th Hour Racing, an international organisation that works to mobilise sailing, maritime and coastal communities with an innovative approach to inspire solutions for the ocean. ‘Looking at land and sea as interconnected and layered ecosystems, we are seeing our plastic footprint show up both on land and at sea, at the surface and below,’ says Rob MacMillan, president of 11th Hour Racing, ‘While we often talk about ocean plastic pollution in the context of plastic water bottles and consumer packaging, the truth is there are
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other contributors to the issue. We are committed to supporting solutions that not only prevent plastic pollution, but also advance more circular solutions to plastic waste.’
Plastic Wrap
Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) – also known as plastic film or shrink- wrap – is increasingly seen as a scourge of modern life. Despite being made from exactly the same stuff as most other plastic products, we’re often told – luckily incorrectly, as it turns out – that plastic film is impossible to recycle. The reality is that plastic film has historically been exported for recycling, but this option is becoming increasingly difficult given tighter standards and restrictions overseas. Colossal amounts of it are sent to landfill and, as most sailors know only too well, far too much of it ends up polluting the ocean… and fouling our propellers.
Top: this enormous entanglement of ‘ghost gear’ – an accumulation of derelict lobster pots and fishing nets – was retrieved from the Gulf of Maine by local fishing crews and professional divers in a pioneering project that was organised by Global Ghost Gear Initiative and funded by 11th Hour Racing
The marine industry is a minnow in all of this but some of its practices, such as shrink-wrapping boats for winter storage, are plastic- intensive. It takes roughly 14 kg of plastic film to wrap an average-size, 40-foot boat. In New England alone, where 50 to 80 per cent of the half a million local boats are wrapped, this generates at least 3,750 tons of plastic waste every year and only a fraction of that is recycled. An environmental organisation from Newport, Rhode Island, USA that is focused on improving ocean health decided to do something about it. ‘It isn’t that shrink-wrap cannot be recycled,’ says Dave McLaughlin, executive director of Clean Ocean Access (COA). ‘It’s simply that there aren’t enough recycling streams available’. Plastic film needs to be recycled separately from other materials, he explains, because when it’s mixed with other plastics it will often cause the processing
GULF OF MAINE LOBSTER FOUNDATION
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