Right now, a few million Brazilians are heading to the coast. In the traffic jams that are inevitably forming on the roads, they will have some time to reflect on the quality and resilience of the maritime environment they hope to enjoy on these days of vacation and sun.
A leaf this week released the bathing conditions of 1,338 Brazilian beaches, with information collected from 14 state environmental agencies. It is incredible that a service of this importance is provided by a press agency and not by the Ministry of the Environment.
The absence of national monitoring of beach bathing, centralized by the federal government, expresses the lack of a policy of protection and sustainable use of the sea in a country with 7,500 kilometers of coastline, the longest in the Atlantic.
The indicator used in this assessment is the amount of fecal coliforms in the water, which reflects the situation of basic sanitation in the surroundings, that is, the extension of the network and the quality of sewage treatment. The survey showed that water quality has remained stable over the past five years.
Information is essential for the citizen, but it is far from expressing the totality of the waste that pollutes and threatens the oceans. The biggest threat comes from plastics, which could eliminate marine life in a few decades and cause serious damage to human health.
While there is, at least, the awareness that it is urgent to universalize basic sanitation, a goal present in all laws dealing with the subject and that could be achieved if the necessary investments were made, there are no public policies to minimize or ban the growing use of disposable plastics. Citizens, in fact, are encouraged on a daily basis to use them more and more.
A study published in June in the journal Nature Sustainability revealed that 80% of the waste found in the oceans is made up of plastic. Based on 36 databases across the planet, the survey used information from 12 million observation points and analyzed 112 categories of waste larger than three centimeters in seven ecosystems.
The largest proportion of plastic is found in surface water (95%), followed by shore (83%). Disposable bags, plastic bottles, food containers and food packaging, single-use items, are the items that most pollute the seas, representing almost half of human waste.
According to one of the authors of the research, Carmen Morales-Caselles, from the University of Cádiz (Spain), “we were surprised by the high proportion of items to go, not just from McDonald’s but as bottles of water and drinks like Coca-Cola”.
Since the start of massive plastic production in the 1950s, the world has produced 8.3 billion tons. Currently, 500 million tons of plastic are produced annually, according to Greenpeace. Although plastic can be used for products with a long useful life, such as furniture and piping, around 50% of this production is destined to disposable products.
As the material is not biodegradable, part of it ends up in the oceans. According to the European Parliament, in 2018, more than 150 million tons of plastic waste polluted the oceans.
If the exponential growth in the use of disposables isn’t reversed, by 2050 there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans, according to an estimate by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The damage caused by plastic in the marine environment will be irreversible. Some types of plastic, such as Styrofoam, can take up to 450 years to fully decompose.
In the oceans, plastic is gradually divided into microfragments, which end up ingested by marine fauna, such as plankton and small crustaceans, which become intoxicated and contaminate the entire food chain until reaching human consumption, with as yet unknown consequences for health.
During an attempt to rescue a whale in Thailand, she vomited five plastic bags and died. At autopsy, veterinarians found 80 bags and other plastic waste, which clogged his stomach.
In 2016, according to an FAO study, around 800 species of molluscs, crustaceans and fish had already eaten plastic. A survey carried out on 34 species of birds in northern Europe showed that 74% of them ingested plastic, showing damage to the digestive system.
You, who are now under the parasol, drinking that caipirinha in a disposable cup, eating a fish bait that looks healthy, must be thinking with a clear conscience: “I’m sure I refused the straw, but for the cup, the way to go is to recycle”.
But the solution is not that simple, as recycling most plastics is not economically viable. And straws, which began to be fought as a result of an initiative by the European Union, represent around 2% of disposables.
Of all the plastic produced so far on the planet, only 9% was recycled and 12% was incinerated (which also generates environmental pollution), while 79% remained in the environment or was transported to a landfill or dump.
Transporting waste to landfills, although it is the only solution for the thousands of tons of waste produced daily in coastal municipalities, is far from being a sustainable solution.
The waste from the four municipalities on the north coast of São Paulo (São Sebastião, Caraguatatuba, Ubatuba and Ilha Bela), after being collected, compacted and transshipped, is sent to sanitary landfills located in Jambeiro and Tremembé, in the ParaÃba Valley, covering a distance of 100 km to 170 km.
The thousands of disposables, used only once and discarded, make this long journey in trucks that climb the mountain loaded, emitting CO2 and contributing to climate change, at an extremely high cost. According to Instituto Polis, these municipalities spend around 10% of their municipal budget on solid waste management.
The scale of this problem requires more radical public policies, such as the ban on single-use plastic disposables and a strict policy to reduce waste generation. It is necessary to implement reverse packaging logistics, enforcing the National Solid Waste Law, which determines that the generator must be the payer.
But the responsibility is also of the citizen, of all of us. Refusing disposable items, using a reusable bag, mug, cup and straw for personal use and changing consumption habits are part of the small actions that make us feel contributing to a better world, in a year that we hope will be change.
.
