Marine Plastic Pollution now a ‘Global Emergency’

“A deadly ticking clock counting slowly down” is how plastic pollution in our oceans is described in a vital new report released yesterday.   

“The damage done by rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycle is irreversible – this is a threat to human civilisation and the planet’s basic ability to maintain a habitable environment”, says Tom Gammage, author of the Environmental Investigation Agency’s report ‘Plastic Pollution and the Planetary Emergency’.

The report has been released ahead of a major UN Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi next month, which may lead to a global plastics treaty.

It’s this sort of focus on marine plastic pollution that should put it alongside climate change and biodiversity loss as one of the three existential environmental threats that the UN has concluded must be addressed together.

Addressing marine plastic pollution was one of the main drivers behind the creation of Kelpi. We’ve always recognised that our reliance on effective packaging is essential to support food distribution. But using fossil fuel plastics, which can take 1,000 years to degrade in the ocean, to wrap a piece of fish with a fridge life of two weeks or less, was always obscene. Now there’s more evidence each day of how far microplastics have pervaded every part of our world – from our soils to the air we breathe; from Arctic sea ice to the fish we eat.

Kelpi’s bioplastic packaging has been designed to be marine safe. We start with seaweed, which of course absorbs carbon dioxide as it grows, and we end with packaging that will biodegrade fully and naturally, leaving no toxins behind, in less than 6 months if it were washed out to sea.  

We have to stop pulling fossil fuels from under the ground. And we have to stop using them to create the huge problem of plastic pollution. Bioplastics made from plants like seaweed will allow us to continue packaging food and other products in safe, lightweight material and avoid adding any more to the marine plastic pollution that forms an increasing existential threat to our world.  

Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash