SKY's Ocean Rescue Appeal

[John Arton]

In the U.K. (and possibly around the world) Sky T.V. are fronting a campaign to attempt to clean up the worlds ocean. It is concentrating mainly on the use a single use plastic bags and drinks bottles and also the tiny pellets of the raw material used to make plastic items. The pictures they show of beaches in the likes of India and Pakistan are terrible with plastic and human waste covering them, affecting all life. (hardly to be unexpected from countries that whilst claiming to be "modern" and having such programs as space exploration and nuclear capability still fail to provide even the most basic needs such as clean water, sewage treatment etc. to the majority of their population). This may seem far remote from us in Europe or Australia but it is a proven fact that waste from beaches in those and many other countries can end up anywhere in the worlds oceans. This mass of plastic waste can and does enter the human food chain and also has an effect on sea temperature's and climate change, preventing evaporation from the oceans whilst also covering the ocean and retaining heat. It is a noble cause in my view and deserves all our support.
I guess many of us experienced the growth in waste observed at sea when we were sailing, the last trans pacific crossing I did there was not a day passed without sighting some sort of waste.
This led me onto what we USED to chuck overboard. MARPOL conventions have virtually eliminated waste from ships entering the Oceans be it cargo or galley or human waste and recently waste emissions from ships engines. Huge fines have been levied on ship owners caught guilty of throwing even one plastic sack of waste overboard or for by-passing oily water separator's with "magic pipes". Port State and other Surveyors regularly examine ships Garbage Record Logs to see if the events and amounts logged reflect garbage receipts etc.
These thoughts led me onto containers. Virtually all goods these days are shipped in containers beyond those raw materials such as coal, iron ore etc. and a number of these are lost overboard annually either through container ships sinking or breaking up or containers lost overboard in heavy weather.
All the contents of those lost containers must surely enter the Oceans leading to even more contamination of the oceans.
Upwards of a thousand containers annually are lost overboard and if you add in those lost due to collision/sinking etc. of container ships then that number increases tremendously.
So, with virtually all manufactured goods these days being carried by container just how much is the container adding to the worlds ocean pollution.
Think about it. Before containers arrived on the scene, goods would be transported from factory to dockside warehouses, stored there, then loaded onto cargo ships that then transported them around the world where they would be unloaded into warehouses before being transported to there final destination. It was very rare for any cargo to be lost at sea and if it was it would normally be cargo carried on deck such as heavy machinery (sinks straight to the ocean floor) or the likes of timber deck cargo (non polluting). Any spillage or damage to goods in those days would have been contained on land therefore and not get into polluting the oceans.
Just a Sunday sermon to exercise your brains.
rgds
JA

[happy daze john in oz]

An article on our TV news last highlighted this as it showed how much of the marine life confuse plastic waste for jelly fish on which many feed.

We have here in Oz, and no doubt other countries, plastic one way bags that will deteriorate to nothing in about 4 weeks but the gov will not allow them to be used here in Victoria, while at the same time saying we must move to other means.

Until about 1983 we used large brown paper bags in the supermarkets, then came the plastic bags, now they say we should use the 'green 'bags.

That was fine years ago when the house wife had time to shop, but now many shop on the way home and will not carry these bags with them,

But is this the answer to remove the bags from the system?

In Ireland it is illegal to put uncovered rubbish in the bin. On bin day a guy walks in front of the pick up ruck to inspect all bins. If there is uncovered waste the owner gets a fine. There was a time when all residents used the plastic shopping bags for this purpose, now they have to buy bin liners for which the sale of has risen by over 1000%.