Showing posts with label plastic pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plastic pollution. Show all posts

Thursday, 25 April 2024

India pollutes the oceans with plastic more than all other nations

Regarding the disposal of plastic into the oceans, India has been identified as one of the leading contributors. The nation faces significant challenges in managing plastic pollution. The accompanying image was generated by artificial intelligence, drawing inspiration from a sculpture titled 'The Giant Plastic Tap' by Canadian artist Benjamin Von Wong, which was exhibited outside the Ottawa talks building.

Click on the image to see it larger - important for smartphones.


India plays a significant role to say the least in plastic pollution in our oceans. Here are some key facts:

  1. Annual Plastic Waste Dumping: In 2020, India was the worst country for plastic waste in the oceans, dumping approximately 126.5 million kg of plastic each year. To put this into perspective, that weight is equivalent to over 250 thousand bottlenose dolphins, one of the most commonly found dolphin species in the ocean.

  2. Comparison with the United States: Despite the United States producing double the amount of plastic waste annually compared to India (42 billion kg), only 2.4 million kg of it ends up in our oceans. This discrepancy could be due to the fact that the U.S. exports a significant portion of its waste to countries like India, which may have less effective waste management systems.

  3. Exporting Plastic Waste: In 2018, the United States exported 157 thousand shipping containers filled with plastic waste, equivalent to approximately 1.07 million kg of plastic. While some of this waste went to countries with good waste management systems, a substantial amount was shipped to countries like India, which struggle with plastic waste management.

  4. Collective Impact: The top five plastic waste dumpers globally contribute an astonishing 314 million kg of plastic into the ocean each year. India’s contribution remains a critical environmental challenge.

Here’s the list of the top 10 countries based on plastic waste dumped into the oceans:

  1. India: 126.5 million kg
  2. China: 70.7 million kg
  3. Indonesia: 56.3 million kg
  4. Brazil: 38 million kg
  5. Thailand: 22.8 million kg
  6. Mexico: 3.5 million kg
  7. Egypt: 2.5 million kg
  8. United States: 2.4 million kg
  9. Japan: 1.8 million kg
  10. United Kingdom: 703 thousand kg11

Efforts to address plastic pollution are crucial to safeguard marine life and ocean ecosystems. 🌊🐬

How bad is plastic pollution in India?


India faces a significant challenge when it comes to plastic pollution. Here are some key facts:

  1. Annual Plastic Waste Generation: India generates approximately 3.5 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. This staggering amount has almost doubled over the last five years, highlighting the severity of the issue.

  2. Per Capita Plastic Consumption: While the per-capita plastic consumption in India is relatively low at 13.6 kg, compared to countries like the U.S. (108 kg) and China (56 kg), the impact is still substantial. Plastic pollution adversely affects our ecosystems and is also linked to air pollution.

  3. Recycling and Collection: India collects only 60% of its plastic waste, with the remaining 40% directly entering the environment. This lack of proper collection exacerbates the problem.

  4. Single-Use Plastics: To address this issue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India’s pledge to phase out single-use plastics by 2022. These single-use plastics include items like straws, cutlery, earbuds, and packaging films.

  5. Recycling Challenges: Despite efforts, a large fraction of plastic waste in India still ends up in landfills or waterways, posing a significant environmental threat.

Efforts are being made through initiatives like the National Dashboard on Elimination of Single Use Plastic, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Portal, and more to manage plastic waste effectively and create a better future.

Sources: extensive search of the internet. India Today is one source. Another is Euro News. Many more. 
 
P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Tuesday, 9 November 2021

Are you and your cat companion damaging your health by breathing 7,000 tiny particles of plastic daily?

We don't know, is the answer to the question in terms of health. However, it seems pretty clear from recent research that both humans, cats and dogs are inhaling 7,000 tiny particles of plastic daily. It also seems clear a lot of this plastic comes from fleece clothing. Another source would be the plastic in an almost countless number of household products and fabrics containing plastic nowadays such as carpets.

Are you and your cat companion breathing 7,000 tiny particles of plastic a day damaging health?
Cat and plush toy. Photo in public domain.

Plush toys are nearly always made of fleece and plastics. And of course what's wrong about that is parents put fleece cuddly toys next to their kids in bed. Kids cuddle the toys. So they could be a problem because thousands of micro plastic particles are being inhaled by toddlers.

Carpets are also a potential problem. Years ago I wrote about chemicals and carpets which leach out into the atmosphere causing potential hidden problems. These chemicals might cause mysterious diseases; what veterinarians call 'idiopathic' diseases because they don't know the cause. A lot of illnesses are rather mysterious even to doctors and veterinarians. Perhaps it is the environment in which we place ourselves?

One expert in this area is Dr. Fay Couceiro. She is a reader in environmental pollution at the University of Portsmouth and an expert on micro-plastics. She knows what they are and where they are and what they might do to us. She conducted an experiment recently which showed just how much plastic people and pets are inhaling inside the home.

ASSOCIATED PAGE: Phthalates in vinyl flooring poisoning domestic cats?

As mentioned, it could be as many as 7,000 micro-plastic particles. The highest concentrations are normally in the bedroom where there's lots of soft toys, bedding and carpeting made of synthetic materials.

But the doctor doesn't know always uncertain about the damage they might cause. She has reduced the number of teddy bears on beds in her home and her children's bedrooms have a laminate floor that is plastic but less likely to produce micro-plastic particles than a synthetic or synthetic coated carpet.

She wants people to think about the potential for negative health consequences of plastic products in the home including clothing. I think perhaps the biggest steps one could make to get rid of my microplastics is to buy natural fibre clothing if that is practical nowadays.

One possibility, provided you live in an area where the air not polluted, is to open windows to allow plastic particles to be blown out of the home to the exterior. I'm not sure how practical this is.

You can buy second hand clothes made entirely of natural-based fibres. This may help. But even natural products can be dyed and treated which can undermine any health benefits in buying wool clothing, for example.

ASSOCIATED: Feline Diabetes caused by fire-retardants in carpets, curtains and upholstery

Dr Fay Couciero believes that it is almost impossible to reduce exposure because people have "infected every corner of our planet with this toxic and indestructible material". She wants to turn off the plastic tap but she is hopeful that these micro-plastic particles don't cause health problems. 

In the meantime I think it is wise to make a presumption that they do cause health problems but what kind of problem? More research is needed but if these particles affect us they affect our cat in exactly the same way. We cannot leave them out of the equation or our thinking.

Thursday, 15 April 2021

The equivalent of 120 million plastic water bottles fell onto the USA over 14 months

The title sounds ridiculous but the science is undeniable. A new study in the journal Science discovered that over a 14 month period more than 1000 metric tons of micro-plastic particles fell onto 11 protected areas in the Western US each year. 

Microplastics. Photo: Pixabay.

This is the equivalent of over 120 million plastic water bottles. To put it another way: it's raining plastic. Micro-plastics come from the sea where they are taken up into the atmosphere and ultimately dumped over land. The world is not taking plastic seriously enough but if we don't deal with the problem there will be serious implications for human health. We have to include animal health and domestic animal health in particular.

Fairly soon it is hoped that people will start taking plastic rain seriously in the same way that they took acid rain and fossil fuels seriously. Over the next 10 years we are going to be talking more about the impact of plastics, particularly micro-plastics and their impact on human health.

Concerned people will have seen marine wildlife killed by ingesting plastic bags or seagulls eating bits of plastic believing that they are foods. They even feed plastic particles to their offspring. Whales have been killed by hundreds of pounds of plastic bags in their bellies. But not enough discussion has taken place about plastic rain.

Today's problem is the result of a carelessness with respect to the disposal of plastic in the environment over a period of about 70 years. And over the past 10 years there has been an explosion of single-use plastic. Some of these plastics have not worked through the system yet. This points to a huge problem in the future.

At present we don't have a way of filtering micro-plastics from the soil. Every human organ studied by scientists contain micro-plastics. Scientists have found micro-plastics in the most remote places in the oceans. It seems that every square metre of every ocean contains hundreds of thousands of micro-plastic particles.

Thursday, 15 October 2020

More than one tonne of plastic produced per person since 1950

The amount of plastic sloshing around the planet is equivalent to one tonne of plastic being produced by every person alive on the planet since 1950 (8.3 billion tonnes produced over the past 70 years). And clearly not enough is being done to rectify the problem. It's getting worse and worse annually. The problem is exponential. Dame Ellen MacArthur's foundation has called for an international treaty. Such a treaty would obtain the agreement of signatories to commit to doing something substantive about plastic production. Others say that it is too late to mess around with treaties. It can take years to get countries to agree to treaties and when they are signed they don't stick to the agreement. This happens all the time.

Of the 8.3 billion tons of plastic produced in the past 70 years, three quarters has become waste and a third of that has been mismanaged which includes being dumped or dropped as litter. There is 150 million tonnes of it in the oceans already and every year another 11 million tonnes ends up in the oceans. You'll find plastic in all parts of all the oceans.

Plastic pollution of the oceans
Plastic pollution of the oceans. Picture in the public domain.


Urgent action is needed. It is believed that the amount of plastic in the oceans will treble over the next 20 years. The foundation's report refers to the 1987 Montréal protocol which has helped to protect the ozone layer. There is, therefore, some history in the success of treaties such as this. Germany, the Philippines and Vietnam are three countries who have called for a treaty but other countries such as Britain, the US, Japan, Australia and Canada don't support it, including the WWF.

A treaty (to be clear this is an international agreement) would place limitations on certain single-use plastic products such as straws and set targets on recycling and how to stop the products getting into the oceans.

The problem, as reported, is that although 115 countries have set up regulations regarding single-use plastic and how to limit its damage on the environment it's having little impact. Most of the restrictions concern plastic bag usage and disposal. It's a small part of the overall problem. Beach clean ups report that only 7% of items found are plastic bags.

Some major companies support the initiative such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, Tesco, Unilever and Nestlé. It is not enough. There needs to be a high level of commitment by governments. A campaign group, Changing Markets Foundation, said that calls for a global treaty were "just another delaying tactic by the plastic industry". They argue that the world needs "proven legislative solutions, like deposit systems and reuse targets".

Comment: I shop at Sainsbury's in the UK. I see little, very little commitment by this large company to limiting plastic usage. They still sell bottled water when it could be dispensed in a machine and the customer brings a non-plastic container to the shop and buys it by the litre. That's just my idea but the point I'm making is that I see almost no change in the attitude of Sainsbury's with respect to limiting plastic usage over the many years that this has been discussed. 

Other supermarkets have a similar attitude in my view. The big problem with humankind is that unless individuals are personally impacted by pollution of this kind and only if it affects their health and welfare do they lobby for change. If people can't see it they don't react to it even if it is killing them or harming them in some way or other.

Plastics are certainly killing wildlife but then again people don't see wildlife so in general people don't care about it. It's like trying to turn a juggernaut around. It just doesn't happen or it takes tens of years and which point it is too late.

What has this got to do with cats? A hell of a lot because micro-plastic particles find their way into all areas of our lives. They are in the food chain. They are in marine wildlife which humans and cats eat. Cat food I'm sure contains micro-plastic particles. It affects the health of us all both the human-animal, the domestic animal and the wild species particularly marine wildlife. It is all pervasive and you cannot dissociate the domestic cat from the problem.

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