Plastics in Oceans - CSO Overflow Link

With the accumulating levels of plastics in our oceans threatening to damage the aquatic food-chain, we need to be ask how are they actually getting there? Littering simply cannot be the only cause - so the finger must point to other sources such as the many hundreds of thousands of Combined Sewer Overflows [CSO] that operate during heavy rain and storms globally.

The issue with the CSO aside from discharging untreated sewage into our oceans and waterways, is the fact that anything flushed or washed down the sewers is also carried straight out to sea. Some overflows are equipped with screens - however, these are ineffective against the micro-beads found in cosmetics and rubber particles scrubbed from automotive tyres. Further, unless well maintained a CSO screen will soon blind and become bypassed.

So how can we tackle this source of plastics? Certainly the removal of plastic packaging and micro-beads from cosmetics can go along way to removing the source, however this will not remove the millions of tons of rubber shed from highways.

Truly the only way reduce the contribution from CSOs may be to reduce them in number and to reduce the number of spills through flow modulation (flow regulator valves), increasing network storage, eliminating CSO dry-spills (CSO containment valves) and preferably reducing the volume of water initially entering the networks from highways. 

Please have a look at the Twitter site www.https://twitter.com/PlasticOceans