What, when and where do ocean plastics come from??
With Second Life through 4 years of ongoing field work, supporting 800 informal waste collectors on beaches, islands and coastal areas of southern Thailand and Indonesia, we have now key learnings to share on the types, origins and seasonality of ocean plastics we collect and recycle in the areas where we operate.?This brings new learnings and perspectives on how to address the issue in the field.
The year is clearly divided in two seasons for collecting:?
1-The Monsoon season, the main “ocean plastics harvesting season”. From June to November on the Adaman Sea Coastline where most of our operations happen (in Krabi, Trang and Ranong Provinces). During this season, heavy rains on land bring many plastic wastes to the sea, and storms with strong winds and high tides bring large quantities of floating plastic wastes from the ocean to the shore, in particular on beaches. This is when and where we collect a large majority of our volumes directly on the beaches, at an estimated 300 kg of plastic wastes landing per kilometer of beach per month, during these months. This totals 60% of our yearly volumes.?
About 40 % (in weight) of these floating plastic wastes are PET plastic bottles and the rest PE plastics (9%), styrofoam, flip flops, nylon and PE fishnets (11%) and fishing devices, and mixed plastics (25%) like buoyancy devices, ABS plastic barrels, and other mixed layer packagings (MLPs),? and then flexibles and other plastics (18%) (plastic bags,..).?
More than half of these PET plastic bottles for example, come from tourism and non-local consumption, some even coming from Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, depending on the winds throughout the Monsoon. The local populations on remote islands hence have a very limited responsibility in this marine pollution, and they usually have no resources and infrastructures on the islands to manage these wastes.?
Collecting and transporting them to the mainland by boat is too costly compared to market prices for recyclables. Hence, they usually burn or landfill these wastes on the island, or leave them on the beaches, until the high tides at Monsoon season’s end, take them back to the ocean. If so, they will degrade further into micro-plastics or land later again on beaches. A study has shown that some marine debris could be floating like this for periods of more than ten years..
领英推荐
During the Monsoon, most of the volumes come from beaches, what we call”pure ocean plastics” or “ocean plastics only”? (more than 60 to 80%), and the rest, from the coastal communities.?
2-Outside of Monsoon season, the quantities of ocean plastic wastes landing on beaches is lower, and so the quantities of ocean-bound plastics collected in community areas inland are comparatively higher.? Our priority with the informal collectors remains collection on beaches but it happens as well in the communities themselves, in public areas like along roads, river streams, in rural and? semi-rural areas, within 10 to 20 km of the coastline. The idea is to prevent the leakage of these wastes into the sea, by supporting the collectors in deficient areas along the shore. This action is more preventive, focused on what is called “ocean-bound plastics”, corresponding to mismanaged wastes in deficient areas along the shore. (within less than 10 km of the shore in general for Second Life operations). ?
We will share our key learnings from that in the coming articles,..
#oceanplastic #oceans #circulareconomy #circular #circularity #recycling #marinelife #thailand #sustainability #sdgs
Big thanks to our partners in the field: Wongpanit Krabi CO., LTD. , Fondation Jan et Oscar #tide ocean material? , Asia Green Roads, and sponsors : Caudalie , Groupe Clarins , Societe Generale , Mars , Symrise AG , PUR , ClimeCo , Greenprint Partners , South Pole , PCX , ACT Group ,.. and partners: IUCN , Department of Marine and Coastal Resources of Thailand ( DMCR), World Economic Forum , UpLink - World Economic Forum , Ashoka , Ashoka France , Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship , ONE .