Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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Dead whale had 115 plastic cups, 2 flip-flops in its stomach

2018-11-21 08:01 AP

A dead whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had a large lump of plastic waste in its stomach, including drinking cups and flip-flops, a park official said on Tuesday, causing concern among environmentalists and government officials in one of the world's largest plastic polluting countries.

Rescuers from Wakatobi National Park found the rotting carcass of the 9.5m sperm whale late on Monday near the park in Southeast Sulawesi province after receiving a report from environmentalists that villagers had surrounded the dead whale and were beginning to butcher the rotting carcass, park chief Heri Santoso said.

Santoso said researchers from wildlife conservation group WWF and the park's conservation academy found about 5.9kg of plastic waste in the animal's stomach containing 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, 2 flip-flops, a nylon sack and more than 1,000 other assorted pieces of plastic.

"Although we have not been able to deduce the cause of death, the facts that we see are truly awful," said Dwi Suprapti, a marine species conservation coordinator at WWF Indonesia.

She said it was not possible to determine if the plastic had caused the whale's death because of the animal's advanced state of decay.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 260 million people, is the world's second-largest plastic polluter after China, according to a study published in the journal Science in January. It produces 3.2 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste a year, of which 1.29 million tons ends up in the ocean, the study said.

Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Indonesia's coordinating minister of maritime affairs, said the whale's discovery should raise public awareness about the need to reduce plastic use, and had spurred the government to take tougher measures to protect the ocean.

"I'm so sad to hear this," said Pandjaitan, who recently has campaigned for less use of plastic. "It is possible that many other marine animals are also contaminated with plastic waste and this is very dangerous for our lives."

He said the government is making efforts to reduce the use of plastic, including urging shops not to provide plastic bags for customers and teaching about the problem in schools nationwide to meet a government target of reducing plastic use by 70% by 2025.

"This big ambition can be achieved if people learn to understand that plastic waste is a common enemy," he told The Associated Press.


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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:evil: :evil:


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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Beachfront hit by ‘trash tornado’

Environmental consultant warns of dire consequences after revellers leave mountains of rubbish behind

BY GUY ROGERS - 03 January 2019

Image
Workers start the big cleanup at Shark Rock Pier after the New Year celebrations - Image: Fredlin Adriaan

Beach-lovers woke up to the after-effects of a “trash tornado” on the Port Elizabeth beachfront on Wednesday.

Beaches, lawns, gardens, walkways and carparks were covered in piles of rubbish left behind by people celebrating the first night of 2019.

Shortly after dawn, the brisk offshore wind was blowing papers and plastic into the sea and seagulls were scavenging busily.

The sight had regular members of the Hobie Beach early morning swimming group retreating in disgust and coffee shop managers shaking their heads in anger at the debris banked up outside their doors.

By 7.30am, teams of metro waste-pickers had been deployed and were starting to make inroads into the mounds of food and packaging waste and broken bottles.

But unless the source of the problem was urgently addressed it would wreck the fabric of Port Elizabeth, local environmental consultant Dr Mike Cohen, former director of Eastern Cape Nature Conservation, said.

“The tourists will dwindle. There will be fewer fish uncontaminated by plastic pollution, and a resultant food shortage.”

The problem needed to be tackled with a carrot and stick approach, he said. “The carrot should be having a clean environment that we can enjoy and use to generate sustainable jobs and wealth.

“The stick should be wielded via visible policing, by officials who step in and instruct litterbugs to pick up what they’ve just discarded, and issue fines where necessary.”

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Litter lies strewn along Port Elizabeth’s Marine Drive after being left behind by beachfront revellers - Image: Fredlin Adriaan

Greater efforts needed to be made to create awareness through school and community education programmes, he said. On the other end of the spectrum, awareness about litter should be tackled by boosting the status of the workers employed to clean up the mess.

“It’s a horrible job but a crucial one. At the moment litter picking is regarded as the lowliest form of employment and this needs to change in terms of the respect we give these people and how much they are paid.”

If the public did their bit and a spotless environment was achieved, this would not make municipal cleanup staff redundant, he said.

“There are a myriad important environmental and socioeconomic improvement projects to tackle, for instance, the clearing of alien vegetation.”

Metro spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki said the municipality had in fact improved its focus on the beachfront festive season litter issue with bigger litter-picker teams and intensified monitoring.

“On the other hand, however, we have increased numbers of people flocking to the beachfront. This year from Kings Beach to Hobie Beach alone for the December 31-January 1 event it is estimated that there were 60,000 people.”

The metro hired an extra 200 Expanded Public Works Programme recruits to bolster its beach cleanup team at the start of the festive season through to the end of January, at a cost of R2.9m. Only 14 of them turned up initially for work but replacements were quickly slotted in and there had been “on average good attendance”, Mniki said.

He said the issue of litter was a joint responsibility of the municipality and its citizens.

It was being addressed primarily through awareness spearheaded by its War on Waste environmental education bus which visited schools, taxi ranks and other points.

“There is also an enforcement element where people can be fined up to R2,000 for littering.” Pressed on this point, Mniki said a number of these fines had been dispensed in cases where rubbish had been illegally dumped out of a bakkie.

No data was immediately available regarding the fining of litterbugs, however.


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Ramaphosa to launch 'Good Green Deeds' to tackle environmental protection

2019-02-28 16:36 - Duncan Alfreds

President Cyril Ramaphosa will on Thursday announce a programme designed to place environmental care at the centre of South African culture.

"Because of environmentally insensitive human action, the forces of nature conspired to set in motion the dramatic process of climate change," Ramaphosa said in his response to the debate on his State of the Nation Address (SONA) in February.

The Good Green Deeds campaign would give effect to environmental stewardship concerns.

"When you produce plastic bags or cartons for milk, your responsibility is not only for production of that material, but it's about how the product finds its [way] back into [the] system for recycling," Department of Environmental Affairs spokesperson Albi Modise told News24 on Thursday.

Modise is in East London where the president is expected to formally announce the programme.

Direct threat to the environment

He said that consumer culture was a direct threat to the environment.

"Consume and throw away: In doing that you create more and more waste and some of that plastic find its way into our oceans."

The president linked climate change with poverty alleviation in his SONA debate response.

"We are all affected in different ways by the environmental changes taking place on land, in our oceans and in the air. Unless we tackle climate change, we will not be able to meet our developmental objectives."

Some large South African retailers have decided to phase out selling single-use plastics, as a way to contribute to the reduction of plastic waste.

On Wednesday, the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs discussed future legislative restrictions, or even a ban on single-use plastics, EWN reported.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), South Africans use between 30kg and 50kg of plastic per person per year – and much of that ends up in the oceans.

The United Nations Environment Programme's State of Plastics report for 2018 says that, by 2050, there will be about 12 billion tons of plastic in landfills, and plastic production may account for 20% of oil consumption.

"Plastic bags are often ingested by turtles and dolphins who mistake them for food. There is evidence that the toxic chemicals added during the manufacture of plastic transfer to animal tissue, eventually entering the human food chain," says the report.

'Sustainable relationship with our environment'

The organisation says that microplastics ingested by fish can enter the human food chain and that these particles have been found in 90% of bottled water and 83% of tap water.

"The idea is to galvanise our society to make sure that we do not litter. With the amount of waste you are creating, you are creating a space for recycle," said Modise.

"It's also about ensuring that we have a sustainable relationship with our environment."

The programme was intended to have a long-term effect, he added.

"We did not put it as a project with a timeframe. We looked at it as a programme that is more societal in nature."

South Africa may have taken inspiration for the campaign from India.

Indian Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan launched the country's Green Good Deeds campaign on February 5.

"We met with the Indians at the BRICS summit last year in Durban and they shared with us that model," said Modise.


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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Call to ban single-use plastics in SA by 2020

Eco-activists urge political leaders to take up the cause

BY GUY ROGERS - 09 March 2019

The organisations are challenging the leaders of the country’s four main parties to lead the way in the campaign to introduce a ban by January 1 2020 on plastic carrier bags, small fruit and vegetable bags, plastic straws, stirrers, cutlery and earbuds............

(The rest of the article only for subscribers)


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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"How many plastic bags do you want mam?" (probably the "mam" was not there)

"None, thank you, I have my own shopping bag" (I had brought a shopping bag from home :yes: )

Result: Mouths open and strange expressions as if I were an alien O**

The problem is easy to resolve: NO PLASTIC BAGS TO BE HAD, ONLY PAPER BAGS!!


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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Durban beach buried in garbage after heavy rains

2019-03-11 15:30

Image
Plastic waste that washed up in Durban on 11 March 2019 following heavy rain. Picture: Supplied/Hanno Langenhoven

Piles of plastic bottles and other debris accumulated on a Durban beach on Monday morning following heavy rains in KwaZulu-Natal.

The scene at Blue Lagoon was filmed by Hanno Langenhoven, strategic manager for recycling at the Wild Trust, who described it as an "ongoing problem" that occurs every time the Umgeni River comes down after a big inland storm.

Langenhoven said a massive hail storm in the Mooi River area, some 150km inland from the beach, had led to the deluge of debris.

Despite it being a regular problem, Langenhoven said he was still shocked when he went down to the river mouth to check, describing it as the "worst event" he'd seen.

"It a soul destroying, depressing place to be in," he said.

"I anticipate that there are at least 60 cubic metres of plastic on the beach as we speak – that's conservative," he told News24.

Image
Picture: Hanno Langenhoven

Langenhoven dispatched a team of Wildlands staff to clean up the beach, a task he anticipated would take between three and five days. The NGO then plans to transport the plastic waste to a recycling plant.

"If we didn't intercept it on the beach, that 60 cubic metres would end up in the ocean," he said.

But Langenhoven added that the problem would reoccur as soon as it rains again.

Litter booms were installed on the Umgeni River in 2017 to limit the amount of plastic waste that washes out to sea.

But due to the accumulation of debris and the heavy rainfall, the booms snapped, explains Nompilo Buthelezi from Durban Green Corridor.

Buthelezi said the booms were "very effective" when the rains were not too heavy, and that a team would repair the them as soon as the river flow slowed down.


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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:no: :no:


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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A part of the population needs some serious education! :evil:


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Re: Plastic and other Environmental Dangerous Waste

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:evil: Ja! Some try and recycle to get some extra money, some think littering is job-creation.


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