Plastic pollution is one of the major problems when it comes to climate change. Since plastic takes a lot of time to decompose, it damages our environment, health, and animals in a dangerous scale.
National Geographic says that around 18,000,000,000 pounds of plastic waste is deposited in the world each year. This waste goes to oceans and also coastal regions. If you put things on a scale that would be around five grocery bags full of plastic piled up for every foot of the planet's coastline.
All of the plastic is causing serious damages to the creatures all around the world. Especially creatures that live in the ocean like turtles, whales, sea birds, and other animals.
A new research is starting to emerge about the impact that the long term of plastic in the ocean might have on the seafood chain. What might be the impact also on our very health?
Nearly 40% of all the plastic waste comes from packaging. What is really shocking is that only about a fifth of all the plastic it's recycled. So many businesses around the world are trying to find innovative solutions, but we are still behind when it comes to saving our environment.
In Kwinana which is an Australian city the authorities have come up with an elegant and simple solution. They have placed filtration systems on drainage pipes which catch all debris. This means that water goes out and plastic along with all the other debris are caught in the net.
These pipes drain water from residential areas so all the litter and waste that comes from houses and businesses goes right into the net. When the experiment first started the authorities only placed two nets to see how much capacity they would have. In just a couple of weeks, the nets managed to capture around 800 pounds of garbage. Since they saw that this was a pretty good solution to gather all the litter together and reduce the pollution they decided to install these nets all over the city.
The production and installation cost for one net is around $10,000. While it might sound expensive to some people, the profit that we might get out of them is irreplaceable.
The nets are removed when they are full and the trash is thrown into the collecting centres where they are separated into recyclable and non-recyclable. Then the nets are put back into the drainage pipes.
This system is proof that just by improving small things we can make a huge impact to help our world and humanity evolve in a more positive way for everybody. After all we took this environment from our ancestors and we owe it to the future generations.
what do your friends and family think of this idea?
