LAST September 13, my favorite TV show, “Marooned with Ed Stafford” on Discovery Channel, chose the Philippines for Ed’s new survival adventure. I was excited to see how the show would feature a remote, uninhabited island in Coron, Palawan. Ed would try to survive for several days on this island without food and water and no tools. He is only bringing cameras, an emergency satellite phone and an emergency medical kit.
When Ed landed on the beach, my excitement turned into disgust. The white sand was littered with trash, mostly plastic bottles. They are all over the place. There were also fishing nets, glass bottles and all sorts of non-biodegradable waste. Ed burst out his disappointment with the island's sorry state. Though embarrassing, he used the plastic bottles and nets in surviving on the island.
Well, it’s not just the Philippines. Plastic in the ocean is a global problem. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), around 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year. Only 9 percent of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled. About 12 percent has been incinerated, while the rest has accumulated in landfills, dumps or the natural environment that includes our oceans.
In the 2020 International Coastal CleanUp activity of the group Ocean Conservancy, plastic beverage bottles rank second as the most collected item. It was fifth in 2019 and third in 2018. This shows that plastic bottles are a big contributor to ocean plastic pollution.
Did you know that one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute around the world? Where did those plastic bottles in the Ed Stafford show originate? They likely came from nearby islands. Those thrown into rivers eventually end up in the oceans and are swept into the coastlines by waves.
It is also possible that those plastic bottles came from other countries. In the clean-up drive conducted in El Nido, Palawan in 2018, 70 percent of the marine debris collected are plastic bottles. About 60 percent to 70 percent of them were from neighboring countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, China and Japan. The sources of the trash were identified through the markings and labels on the bottles.
Not all floating plastic bottles will reach shorelines. Some will join the big garbage patches in the middle of the ocean. The largest of these “floating garbage island” is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is located halfway between Hawaii and California. It has an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers, an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France. An estimated 1.8 trillion plastic pieces are floating in the patch, which is equivalent to 250 pieces of debris for every human in the world.
To address this plastic pollution problem, the government can regulate or ban single-use plastics. A bill was already approved by the House of Representatives in July. A counterpart bill had to be passed by the Senate. Meanwhile, let’s avoid using bottled water.