LONDON: Fresh from a gruelling sea journey of more than seven hours negotiating 24 miles (38.6 km) of the world’s busiest shipping lanes on a paddle board, Lizzie Carr is on a mission.
She recently became the first woman to cross the English Channel solo on the flimsy stand-up craft, to draw attention to the “global plastic crisis”. From fishing lines to flip flops, there are more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the world’s oceans, according to a 2014 study published in a Public Library of Science journal.
Plastic degrades over time into tiny particles known as microplastics which can be ingested by marine life, together with plastic microbeads used in toiletries and other household products, harming the food chain and environment.
Plastic debris has been found littering the oceans from the North to the South Poles and around remote Pacific islands. But only 1 per cent is thought to be floating on the sea surface — the remaining 99 per cent is scattered along coast lines, buried deep in sea-beds or hidden in the guts of marine creatures, said Erik van Sebille, oceanographer and associate professor at Utrecht University.
Marine experts fear there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, measured by weight, according to a factsheet from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based charity working to end waste in the economy.
Internationally, significant efforts are being made to remove plastic from the world’s water bodies.
One example is “The Ocean Cleanup”, a Dutch foundation formed after a speech by a concerned Dutch teenager went viral online. — AFP
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