08.06.2018 – Eye opener numbers

Today was World Ocean Day yet the ocean celebrated without us, since the weather conditions were not good for us to go out. What a bummer because 10% of the day takings were surposed to be donated for “The Blue Dream Project”. But all is not lost and today´s group planed that they will go out on Monday. Their 10% plus all the shop bookings done today will be for the benefit of the project.

Because we could not talk about plastics today during our trips, there are a few eye opener numbers here. It probably speak for itself, so that it becomes clear to everyone how important the reduction of plastic is!

• In 18. century there were the first products made from (hard) rubber.
• 1907 Leo Hendrik Baekeland (USA) registered his heat-pressure patent to produce phenolic plastics.
• Since 1950 an amount of 8,3 Mrd. tons of plastics were produced (this equates a weight of 1.000.000.000 elephants or 80.000.000 Blue whales or 822.000 Eiffel towers or 25.000 Empire State Buildings)
• From 8,3 Mrd. Tons of plastic only 600Mill. Tons were recycled, 800Mill. Tons burned.
• Recycling rates are low: Europa (30%), China (25%) and USA (9%)
• Nowadays 300 Mill. Tons of plastic are produced per year
• Around 1.000.000 sea birds and 100.000 Marine mammals are dying because of plastics every year.
• The average time of decomposing: fishing line 600 years – disposable diapers 450 years – PET bottles 450 years – beverage can 200 years – styrofoam cups 50 years – plastic bag 10-20 years – fag butt 1-5 years
• In some parts of the ocean you will find six times more plastics than plankton.

 In Thailand recently a Pilot whale died. Cause of death: PLASTIC! The animal had 8,5kg of plastic bags in his stomach. This definitely is not a single case!!

In the sea – salt, sun and wave (friction) affect the plastic products. Even if the plastic is imperceptible to our human eye, the microparticles continue to exist. They are taken up by zooplankton and thus enter the food chain cycle with all the chemicals they contain. (Information taken from plastic waste statistics 2016 and 2017)

By Fatima Kutzschbach