By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
According to information the European Union is launching a pilot program in the Mediterranean in May 2011 that will pay fishing fleets to collect and then recycle the plastic waste littering the ocean.
The European Union is taking an innovative approach to dealing with the growing problem of plastic litter in the ocean – paying fishermen to collect the trash and starting in the Mediterranean, fishing fleets will collect the plastic waste, using EU-provided nets and equipment, and then take it to processors for recycling.
The EU plans to pay for the initial costs of the pilot program, but hopes the revenue from the sale of the collected plastics will eventually make the program self-sustaining.
Fish and other marine life can become injured or die when they ingest plastic. Marine litter also threatens the fishing industry by depleting fish stocks, damaging fishing gear and contaminating the catch.
“Preserving the Mediterranean Sea is not only a matter of environmental sustainability. It is also a matter of considerable economic and social implications,” wrote EU fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, in a blog entry about plastic marine litter.
The EU’s pilot program will provide a much-needed second source of income for fishermen who have been losing profits due to diminishing fish stocks.
This also gives the fishermen something to do and – hopefully – some income during those times when they are not permitted to go out to sea to catch fish, as happens when they have fulfilled their permitted catch quotas.
Plastics of all kinds are contaminating the world's oceans, including the Mediterranean Sea, and causing great problem to all manner of wildlife, and the great majority of this plastic is only there due to our laziness of not putting it into the proper places for disposal.
Some of it is from ships either lost, such as ropes and such, and others has been thrown overboard. Shipping has used the oceans for ever and a day as a dumping ground for the wast from ships, including, at times, oil.
While in the days of sail and and then steam most of the things thrown overboard were biodegradable, such as sisal and hemp ropes, wooden crates, etc., today most, if not indeed all, of that is made from from plastics of one kind or the other which does not biodegrade harmlessly as does natural fiber or wood.
The beaches around the globe too are littered with waste from shipping, as well as with waste that has travelled the oceans from other parts of the world.
We must really rethink our use of oil-based plastics and the way we dispose of the products made from it.
© 2011
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