Plastic waste in the ocean comes mostly from Asia

World
Europe

02:27

The organizers of Earth Day, an international day of environmental action that falls on April 22, said plastic is threatening the planet’s survival.

Research shows almost all of the plastic waste found in the world’s oceans comes from just 10 rivers – and eight of them are in Asia, including the Yangtze in China, the Ganges in India and the Mekong, which spans across Southeast Asia.

One country the Mekong flows through is Thailand; in the capital Bangkok there are 12 million people producing plastic waste. Much of it ends up in the city’s canals. Cups, bottles, food containers and bags; plastic so tough it can last hundreds of years without degrading. Huge amounts of waste is carried into rivers and then pushed onwards into the ocean.

Workers gather plastic waste in a Bangkok canal. /CGTN Photo

Rivers like the Mekong flow through six Asian countries: China, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam - before dumping the waste into the South China Sea. Now German research has revealed the Mekong is one of just 10 rivers worldwide that between them carry up to 95 percent of all the plastic that ends up in the oceans.

Waterways are blighted by trash. /CGTN Photo

Dr. Thon Thamrongnawasawat, a marine biologist based in Bangkok, said Mekong countries can’t cope with the amount of waste they produce, resulting in landfill dumping and so-called waste mountains.

“The countries around here have a lot of flooding in the rainy season and when the flooding comes the plastic that is dumped – the big plastic mountains – the flooding takes it to the river and the river to the sea,” he said.

A phenomenon increasingly seen is the accumulation of plastic waste at sea - known as ‘trash islands’. One was discovered in Thailand in 2017, just off tourist beaches.

Waste is collected and dumped in landfill. Some waste overflows into the canal. /CGTN Photo

The German team said failure to manage waste at the source is one of the main reasons so much ends up in the ocean; where it kills aquatic life and devastates the marine environment.

Much of the waste escapes into rivers and the sea. /CGTN Photo

In Thailand many shops automatically serve all goods in plastic bags – and routinely give out plastic stirrers and straws with any drink. To reduce waste, consumers are now being urged to say ‘no’ to plastic products and there are plans to introduce a charge for any bag from a store.

“In Thailand, we’re going to have a system called ‘user pays’ if you want to use plastic you will have to pay for it. Many countries already do this, like China and in Europe," Thamrongnawasawat said.

“In our universities, it is already happening, there is a small charge for a plastic bag – and they are banned altogether in our marine national parks," he added. “Also the small plastic covers we have on water bottle caps – we use 2,600 million of them a year – so now we are going to ban them, next year bottles won’t have that cover."

“We are in a time of change, people must be more responsible for their plastic use.”

There is a ray of hope. For the first time scientists have created an enzyme that can break down plastic. It follows the discovery in Japan of a bacterium that gradually attacks the material. International researchers improved the process; to create an enzyme that starts breaking down plastic in just a few days, far quicker than the centuries it takes in the oceans.