To mark World Oceans Day, Kyla Smith of the Bermuda Marine Debris Taskforce explains how single-use plastics are putting the oceans and the planet at risk. This is the first in a series of articles on the marine environment and pollution

Imagine that the Sea Venture was stocked full with plastic water bottles during its voyage. More than 400 years later these bottles would still be around, floating in the ocean as tiny pieces broken up by sun and waves. We have been accumulating plastic pollution for more than 70 years and continue to produce more every year. Single-use plastic products such as water bottles and food wrappers can persist in nature for centuries. It is unclear how long it will take some plastics to completely biodegrade; estimates range from 450 years to never. These products that we are now dependent on are drowning us. Plastics are one of the biggest threats to our planet’s ecosystems and our very existence.

The first synthetic plastic was engineered in 1869 to mimic natural products and to replace and conserve materials such as ivory and tortoise shell. Inventor John Wesley Hyatt was dubbed “the saviour of the elephant and tortoise” with his revolutionary discovery. It is hard to think of plastics nowadays helping the environment, but they did just that during this time period. It was only in the 1950s that plastic products took the planet by storm, advertised as making day-to-day living easier. The lightweight, durable, cheap and disposable features made plastics extremely attractive. The “material of a thousand uses” rapidly grew in popularity, yet production remained relatively low for 40 years. It wasn’t until the 1990s that single-use products skyrocketed into grotesque volumes and have increased annually ever since.

Plastic’s strength and durability are its main attributes, yet the reason it is plaguing our planet. Plastics are made of a mixture of toxic materials, which also incorporate nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuels. These materials do not break down naturally. Instead they break into tiny pieces when the sun’s rays weaken the polymers that keep the plastic products intact. These micro-plastics become attracted to other pollutants in the environment, making them super toxic to any animal that mistakenly eats them. Once consumed, the plastic leaches toxic chemicals that remain in digestive tissues and fat reserves. These toxins bioaccumulate up the food chain, making their way into the food we eat.

We ignored the words of environmentalists such as Rachel Carson in the 1960s. She shone light on the dark side of our plastic obsession and how these toxic pollutants were hurting our planet through our waterways. We know how to fix this and what needs to be done. We don’t need to reinvent the entire energy system in order to make important changes. Many valiant souls such as Carson have since spoken up, but we still face a real danger of tipping off the edge of what our planet can cope with.

We all need to speak up; if not with our voice, then at least with our actions. We need to tell major corporations that produce single-use plastic products that we don’t want plastic. We need to be conscious consumers and avoid buying single-use plastic products altogether.

We can all do our part by picking up after ourselves and others. More than half of all the plastic produced is intended to be used once and then thrown away within minutes after purchase. If we can end this addiction to single-use plastics, we can dramatically decrease the 300 million tonnes of waste we produce each year.

In his famous book The Lorax Dr Seuss urges: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

• Kyla Smith is Dive Safety Officer at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and a member of the Bermuda Marine Debris Taskforce which is a group of local environmental and research organisations which aims to promote awareness of the impact of marine debris landing on Bermuda’s beaches and affecting marine life and to propose solutions to the growing problem.

Further reading:

Hammer, Jort & Kraak, Michiel & Parsons, John. (2012). Plastics in the Marine Environment: The Dark Side of a Modern Gift. Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. 220. 1-44. Available online at: www.researchgate.net

https://www.unenvironment.org/interactive/beat-plastic-pollution/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-waste-pollution-trash-crisis/

https://www.sciencehistory.org/the-history-and-future-of-plastics