EU to Pay Fishermen to Collect Ocean Litter

The European Union is launching a pilot program in the Mediterranean this month that will pay fishing fleets to collect and then recycle the plastic waste littering the ocean. 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Falken

The European Union is taking an innovative approach to dealing with the growing problem of plastic litter in the ocean – paying fishermen to collect the trash.

Starting this month in the Mediterranean, fishing fleets will collect the plastic waste, using EU-provided nets and equipment, and then take it to processors for recycling. The EU plans to pay for the initial costs of the pilot program, but hopes the revenue from the sale of the collected plastics will eventually make the program self-sustaining.

Fish and other marine life can become injured or die when they ingest plastic. Marine litter also threatens the fishing industry by depleting fish stocks, damaging fishing gear and contaminating the catch.

“Preserving the Mediterranean Sea is not only a matter of environmental sustainability. It is also a matter of considerable economic and social implications,” wrote EU fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, in a blog entry about plastic marine litter.

The EU’s pilot program will provide a much-needed second source of income for fishermen who have been losing profits due to diminishing fish stocks.

Article by Alexis Petru, Earth911

Beach Garbage Recycled as Vacuum Cleaners

HONOLULU — There's a story behind the blue, white and green plastic covering the surface of the Pacific Ocean vacuum cleaner. They're tiny bits of plastic collected from one of Hawaii's dirtiest beaches, Kahuku, where waves dump trash from the Pacific all day long.

 The machine made by Electrolux AB is fully functional and can suck up dirt from a rug like any other vacuum. But the company said it wants the device to serve as an object that provokes a conversation about the large volumes of plastic trash that are polluting the world's oceans.

The Stockholm-based company has also made four other vacuums, each from plastic trash collected in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, North and Baltic seas. None of the five are for commercial sale.

Cecilia Nord, vice president for sustainability and environmental affairs at Electrolux's floor care and small appliances division, said many groups are doing their best to clean the ocean and beaches of plastic.

But the problem keeps growing because people continue to consume more plastic without recycling it afterward, she said.

"We — as a big manufacturer with a global reach — can start a debate and hopefully can contribute to addressing the root cause," Nord said.

Electrolux received its Pacific Ocean plastic from a Hawaii-based volunteer group that cleans up Kahuku beach once a week. The remote shoreline is one of Oahu's dirtiest, in part because current flows tend to deposit trash on that side of the island.

"We can be there on any day and see it coming in on each wave," said Suzanne Frazer, president and co-founder of Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawaii.

Garbage also quickly accumulates at Kahuku because the beach is behind two private properties and can't be easily visited by beachgoers who pick up trash on Hawaii's more populated shorelines every day.

Plastic breaks down into smaller pieces slowly over time but doesn't ever completely disappear. In the ocean, currents carry the small bits to areas where massive gyres of plastic garbage have formed.

Trash is seen on the shore in Kahuku, Hawaii, one of the sites chosen for the Electrolux awareness program. 

 

One spot between Hawaii and California the size of Texas has been dubbed the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Researchers recently found a similar plastic trash gyre in the Atlantic between Bermuda and Portugal's Azores islands.

Seabirds eat the plastic bits — particularly ones that are a bright red or orange — thinking they're squid, fish eggs or other food.

Some Laysan albatross, a seabird that nests at Midway atoll northwest of the main Hawaiian islands, die of starvation with their stomachs full of plastic.

Electrolux's Pacific vacuum has only a few red or orange pieces because marine animals have eaten most of the brightly colored plastic trash pieces before they wash ashore.

Carey Morishige, outreach coordinator for the marine debris program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said people should use less plastic and reuse and recycle what they do use.

"If it's still going in, we're still going to have to clean it up," Morishige said. "The ultimate solution is going to be in stopping this stuff from getting into the ocean in the first place."
Article by Audrey McAvoy, Associated Press

As U.S. Cities Waver on Plastic Bag Tax, China's Bag Ban Saved 1.6 Million Tons of Oil

A "conservation bag" on sale in Beijing. Flickr:  Xiaming

A ban on super thin plastic bags cut the use of 40 billion bags, reduced plastic bag usage by 66 percent and saved China 1.6 million tons of petroleum, according to recent government estimates, Worldwatch reports.

In a byzantine federal-local system in which officials often flaunt national environmental policies, China's bag policy is widely considered to be a shining example of the powerful, positive effects Beijing can have over the environment when it chooses to.

Last week, as the U.N. Environment Program's chief called for a global ban on plastic bag production, Washington, D.C., approved a bag tax. But Baltimore backed out on a bag fee, and a week-old bag ban in Philiadelphia was killed, apparently under pressure from lobbyists of the petroleum and retail industries.

Though government estimates sometimes deserve to be taken with a heavy grain of MSG, and the plastic bag has been met with heavy skepticism, the ban appears to be having a significant effect.

Compliance isn't uniform. A recent survey by Beijing-based non-governmental organization Global Village showed that while nearly 80 percent of people support the ban on free plastic bags, more than 80 percent of retail outlets in rural areas ignored the ban.

Since March, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce has deployed 600,000 regulators to inspect 250,000 retail stores or markets for free plastic bags and non-eco-friendly bags. About 2,000 cases were investigated and 2 million yuan of fines imposed.

The SAIC recently issued a memo warning supermarkets providers of "substandard or free plastic bags" could be fined up to 10,000 yuan ($1,470), and may be subject to one of China's most popular forms of punishment: media exposure.

Last year, state media reported that China's largest plastic bag factory closed following the imposition of the ban in January 2008.

China Daily notes that fashion may be helping to advance the government's policy. Tote bags with hip designs -- or "conservation bags" -- are a must-have accessory for youth in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

The Anya Hindmarch "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" tote caused such a stir in Hong Kong last year that authorities "banned" its sale in Beijing. The counterfeiters were already hard at work.

Besides leading to rampant pollution that ends up in trees and harms birds and fish -- what China refers to as "white pollution" -- plastic bags are seen as a scourge because they aren't often recycled. While the plastics industry says more than 90% of Americans reuse their bags at least once, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates they are recycled at less than one-third the rate of paper bags.

Ireland imposed a tax on plastic grocery bags in 2002, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban conventional plastic grocery bags, in 2007, and Los Angeles will follow suit in 2010.

Steiner's call for a global ban on the bags cited the fact that plastic is the largest source of ocean litter.

The second most abundant ocean pollution, as Matthew noted last week, is cigarettes. 

Ocean debris worldwide kills at least 1 million sea birds and 100,000 mammals each year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has estimated. The litter is most severe in the east Asian seas region, which includes countries such as China with a population 1.3 billion people and where, according to UN figures, almost 60 percent of men smoke.

Beijing has also imposed a partial smoking ban, and this month called for a ban on smoking in hospitals.

Article by Alex Pasternac Treehugger.com