The Ocean Cleanup has carried out a large-scale operation to clean up plastic from one of Guatemala’s rivers before it ends up in the ocean, where it can no longer be collected.
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Earth Day is celebrated annually on April 22. This date was set by the UN to promote action to protect the environment.
This year the theme of the event is “Planet vs Plastic”.
The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit engineering organization based in the Netherlands, recently announced “largest plastic catch in history“in the Guatemalan River Rio Las Vacas.
The activists’ operation helped prevent waste from entering the Caribbean Sea and destroying ecosystems. 272 trucks were filled with garbage.
“No one can catch plastic from the ocean. You can collect it along the coastline, on the beach or on the river bank. But once plastic is in the ocean, it disappears from radar. After all, most of the garbage sinks to the seabed or ends up on very remote beaches where no one lives“Explains marine biologist Melanie Bergmann.
A new report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by scientists from Germany states that by 2050, plastic pollution in the world’s oceans could quadruple.
The researchers found that microplastic concentrations above the dangerous threshold have already been recorded in the Mediterranean, East China and Yellow Seas, as well as in Arctic sea ice.
It found that 88% of marine species studied were negatively impacted by plastic. Aquatic life often mistakes these small particles for food.
