A report by the environmental organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), released this Tuesday (8), states that plastic waste has reached all parts of the ocean and that the contamination affects 88% of marine species, which bring the material in your body, including animals widely consumed by humans.
The entity calls for urgent efforts to create an international treaty on plastics.
‘Plastic Islands’
Prepared in collaboration with Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, the report compiles data from 2,590 scientific studies on the topic, measuring the impact of plastic and microplastics on the oceans.
According to the document, between 19 million and 23 million plastic waste reaches the sea annually. Gigantic “plastic islands”, composed of floating waste, have been found in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The report notes that the oil derivative “has reached all parts of the ocean, from the sea surface to the ocean floor, from the poles to the shores of the most remote islands, and is detectable from the smallest plankton to the largest whale”.
At least 2,144 species suffer plastic pollution in their habitat and some also end up ingesting the material. This is the case, for example, for 90% of seabirds and 52% of turtles.
Contaminated oysters and sardines
The WWF warns that plastic content has been found in shellfish such as blue mussels and oysters, and a fifth of canned sardines contain these particles.
The material degrades into increasingly tiny particles, until it becomes “nanoplastics” smaller than a micron one (thousandth of a millimeter).
The situation is so serious that even if plastic production were to stop, the volume of microplastics would double by 2050, due to the remains already present in the environment. The most disturbing thing, however, is that the flooding will not stop, as the production of new material will double by 2040 and, with that, the waste in the oceans will triple.
‘Threat to the ecosystem’
“We are reaching a point of saturation in many places, which poses a threat not only to the species, but to the entire ecosystem”, explains Eirik Lindebjerg, responsible for investigations on plastic waste at WWF.
Far beyond the shocking images of turtles or seals trapped in nets, however, the danger spreads throughout the food chain: a 2021 study of 555 fish species found plastic remains in 386 of them.
Other studies on cod fishing, one of the most traded fish, revealed that up to 30% of North Sea specimens had microplastics in their bodies. The same applies to 17% of herring caught in the Baltic Sea.
According to the NGO, some of the most threatened marine areas are the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the Mediterranean, which have already reached their microplastic absorption limit.
The single-use plastic problem
WWF expert Eirik Lindebjerg says that while fishing is a major contributor to marine pollution, the main factor is single-use plastics.
“Because plastic has become cheaper, manufacturers produce it in large quantities, which has allowed them to develop single-use products that later end up becoming garbage.” According to the environmentalist, some places are at risk of “ecosystem collapse”, affecting the entire marine food chain.
Lindebjerg calls for a massive decrease in plastic pollution, noting that the amount of pollution that marine ecosystems can absorb is limited. “We need to treat it as a fixed system that doesn’t absorb plastic, which is why we need to move towards zero emissions, zero pollution, as soon as possible.”
WWF is calling for negotiations for an international agreement on plastics at the UN meeting on the environment scheduled from 28 February to 2 March in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. The entity wants a treaty that sets global production standards and true recycling.
