Planet Repair Plastic And Ocean Pllution

There are multiple levels at which all of us can help: things we can do as individuals, innovators, industries, and in policy-making and financing.

Individuals

Become a zero-waste champion - Invest in sustainable, ocean-friendly products - reusable coffee mugs, shopping bags, water bottles, bamboo toothbrushes, food wraps etc.. - try and choose food with no plastic packaging
If you can replace single-use plastics with long-term, sustainable alternatives then substitute. To make this worthwhile across other environmental metrics (e.g. energy use, water use, greenhouse gas emissions), you often need to use them many times over a significant period of time.
In most cases, recycling plastic is better than incineration or landfill. Therefore recycle whenever possible. However, it’s important to note that recycling is not a holy grail to the plastic challenge. Most plastics are recycled only once or a few times before also ending up in landfill or incineration.
Look at your local recycling guidelines to make sure you know what can and can’t be recycled in your area. Avoid putting plastics in recycling which cannot be handled properly. If in doubt, you’re better to put it in landfill than risk contaminating the whole recycling load (if recycling loads have significant levels of contamination they will be judged to be non-economic to sort and therefore sent straight to landfill).
In high-income countries (typically with good waste management systems), plastics at risk of entering the ocean arise from littering and dumping of waste by the public. It really shouldn’t have to be said: don’t litter or abandon your waste, and call out anyone who does. Through collective action, zero tolerance can become a societal norm.
When you are on holiday, try to watch your single-use plastic intake - refuse miniature bottles in hotel rooms, take your own reusable drinking bottle and use reef-safe sunscreen, without microplastics.
Don’t feel shy to ask your local supermarkets, restaurants and local suppliers to ditch plastic packaging, refuse plastic cutlery and straws, and tell them why.
Choose Plastic-Free personal care products: Look for plastic-free face wash, day cream, makeup, deodorant, shampoo and other products these are a major source of microplastics, which get washed into the oceans straight from our bathrooms.
Clean a Beach or a Hiking trail: If you live near a coastline or on holiday, try and do at least one beach/trail cleanup in that area, convince your friends, family to join you.
Join global and local movements, such as World Cleanup Day, or organize a cleanup yourself. If you jog, become a ‘plogger’ and pick up any litter you see on your way.
Rethink your fashion & laundry choices: About 60 % of material made into clothing is plastic - every time these fabrics are washed, they shed tiny plastic microfibres - laundry alone causes around half a million tonne of plastic microfibres to be released into the ocean every year - buy less synthetic and try washing your clothes less often, using washing bags and filters designed to collect microfibres.
Look out for sustainability certificates/labels like the ones below and buy only those products which are certified….

Governments & Policy Makers

It has been a historic trend that some high-income countries have exported some of their recyclable plastics elsewhere. This has often been to mid and low income countries where poor waste management infrastructure has led to high levels of mismanaged waste. This exported waste is therefore at risk of entering the ocean. High-income countries should manage all of their waste appropriately and avoid such transfers to countries which higher risk of poor management.
Some have proposed that if trade of recycled plastics was maintained, mid or low income countries should tax the plastics they accept.These taxes should be used to expand and improve waste management infrastructure in these countries.
An estimated 20 percent of ocean plastic pollution results from the fishing industry. However, in particular regions — for example, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — fishing activity is estimated to generate more than half of plastic pollution. Implementing and monitoring strict regulations on the prevention of waste from fishing activity is important not only at national levels but through regional and global cooperation.
The majority of plastic enters the ocean as a result of inadequate waste management; open landfills and dumps can’t effectively prevent plastics from being lost to the environment. Improving waste management infrastructure – particularly across industrializing countries – is critical and urgent if we are to prevent and reduce plastics entering the ocean. As a general sense of magnitude: if all countries had the management infrastructure of high-income countries, global plastics at risk of entering the ocean could decline by more than 80 percent.

Innovation & Industry

Effective management of waste we produce is an essential and urgent demand if we are to prevent plastic entering the ocean. As noted above, this is a solution we know how to achieve: many countries have low levels of mismanaged waste. This is important, regardless of how successful we are in reducing plastic usage.
However, reducing demand for new plastic production is also crucially important. Whilst recycled plastic is usually favourable to primary plastics, it is not a long-term solution: most recycled plastics still end up in landfill or incineration after one or two cycles.For recycling to be sustainable over the long-term, innovations which would allow for continuous recycling would have to be developed. There has been promising progress in recent years in the development of polymer materials which can be chemically recycled back to their initial raw materials.However, they are currently expensive and unfavourable in terms of energy inputs.
The economic viability and environmental trade-offs will be critical components to the development of not only recyclable materials but other alternatives. Plastic is so widely used because it is cheap, versatile, and requires relatively little energy, water and land to produce. To achieve wide uptake of alternatives across countries of all income levels, breakthrough alternatives will have to be economically competitive with current methods. Functionality, price and scalability of innovations are key to addressing this challenge.

To rapidly reduce the amount of both macro and microplastics in our oceans we have four priorities:

#1 - We must stop plastic waste entering our waterways as soon as possible. Most of the plastic that ends up in our oceans does so because of poor waste management practices particularly in low to middle income countries; So good waste management across the world is essential to achieving this.

But this ambitious target alone will not be enough. We have many decades of legacy waste to contend with. This makes the need for other priorities to be implemented, essential:

#2 - We have to focus our efforts on recapturing and removing plastics already in our offshore waters and shorelines.

#3 - We need to use the existing plastic to make roads, tiles etc....so as to reduce the existing plastic while reusing it for useful products and purposes.

#4 - We need innovative solutions to make plastic free products that are used in households, packaging and various industries.