You know that our seas and oceans are getting more and more polluted with human and chemical wastes every day. These wastes around us continue to endanger the lives of not only us, but also all living things, and cause many living things to die. Some institutions and organizations are doing their best to clean up this pollution. However, the situation may not always be as expected.
Recently, an organization that raises money to clean the dirt from the oceans published a video of the waste they collect. Many people sent congratulatory messages and thanked them after this video. A group of marine biologists made statements about the video that would create a bombshell on the agenda.
“There’s no way ejected waste can look that clean”
The Ocean Cleanup says it will clean up plastic waste in an area between California and Hawaii with more than $100 million in people collected money. After this money raised, The Ocean Cleanup shared a 25-second video on Twitter showing how they removed approximately 3800 kg of plastic waste from the sea. A group of marine biologists didn’t think the same way about the video, which received many congratulations and thank you messages. He said that the plastic waste shown in the video was too ‘clean’ to have spent a long time in the sea, and that normally these wastes should be filled with marine organisms such as algae and mussels.
On top of these rhetoric, The Ocean Cleanup explained that plastic waste does not carry the nutrients necessary for the growth of marine organisms, which is why plastic looks so clean. Again, many scientists and marine biologists denied this statement, saying that these statements cannot be true. After this discussion, which caused many questions in the minds of many, some scientists actually argued that it was a ‘futile effort’.
The sharing of The Ocean Cleanup, which started all these discussions:
Trying to clean open oceans can harm sea creatures
Plastic production has nearly doubled in the last 10 years, reaching 460 million metric tons, but a small portion of these plastics can be recycled. Non-recyclable plastics are incinerated, buried or end up in the sea and the environment. Some estimates based on this data suggest that by 2050 there will be more plastic waste in the oceans than fish. Scientists, on the other hand, say that while there is so much plastic waste and it continues to be produced, cleaning it up is a futile effort.
“We can’t clear our way out of plastic pollution,” says Oceana chief scientist Katie Matthews, who likens it to ‘wiping up spillage while the spigot is still open’. Many scientists who joined Matthews, saying that trying to clean the open oceans can be ‘in vain’ and even ‘harmful’, stated that the wastes in the area to be cleaned are generally created by ‘cleaners’ and can cause the death of sea creatures.
Scientists say that while so much plastic production continues, it is very difficult to collect plastic waste and companies must first reduce plastic production so that there is less waste. We are once again faced with the fact that single-use plastics turn into waste in a very short time, but it can take centuries for these wastes to dissolve in nature. One of the most effective things we can do is to minimize our use of plastic as much as possible to protect nature and our environment.
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