Plastic

Analysis and Comment (6)

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Great ocean garbage patches should be left alone until plastics are stopped from entering our oceans. Flickr/CesarHarada

Leave the ocean garbage alone: we need to stop polluting first

By Erik van Sebille

Recent plans to clean plastics from the five massive ocean garbage patches could do more damage to the environment than leaving the plastic right where it is. There is no doubt that the focus on cleaning…
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Is Coca-Cola Amatil’s opposition to the Northern Territory’s container deposit scheme out of concern for household budgets or simply decreased profit margins? Flickr/Julian Stallabrass

Coke chokes the NT container deposit scheme

By Robin Tennant-Wood, University of Canberra

A reported 10 billion drink containers are thrown away in Australia every year. Many of these are recycled, but many end up in landfill, on roadsides and in waterways. The danger posed to wildlife by…
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Plastic is a major threat to our seabirds and marine life – this bird has filled its stomach with plastic during the 80-90 days it lived. Ian Hutton

Plastic and politics: how bureaucracy is failing our forgotten wildlife

By Jennifer Lavers, Monash University

Seabirds: the poster children for ocean health. Fishers use them to identify fishing hot spots. Environmental and marine scientists use them as indicators of the condition of the ocean environment due…
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Rubbish in the ocean – marine debris – is a terrible threat to wildlife. Discarded fishing nets are among the worst. AAP Image/Department of the Environment and Heritage/Melbourne Zoo

Ghostnets fish on: marine rubbish threatens northern Australian turtles

By Britta Denise Hardesty, CSIRO and Chris Wilcox, CSIRO

Each year around 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is lost or thrown overboard by the fisheries around the world. These “ghostnets” drift through the oceans and can continue fishing for many years. They kill…
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Plastic bottles often end up on the beach where the plastic can remain for decades, harming sea life and the fish we eat. senderweb/Flickr

National container deposit scheme crushed by Australian Senate

By Damien Giurco, University of Technology, Sydney and Stuart White, University of Technology, Sydney

For the past 30 years, South Australians have lived in a state with a “container deposit scheme”. This means on small bottles or cans of water, soft drink, juice or alcohol, consumers pay a 10c deposit…
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Sure, they’re ugly; but plastic bags might not be so bad. Robin Tennant-Wood

Banning plastic bags: real change, or a cosmetic solution?

By Robin Tennant-Wood, University of Canberra

From today, plastic bags are banned in the NT. The ACT will follow suit in November: in 2009 the ACT abandoned its 14-year old “No Waste by 2010” strategy and replaced it with a ban on plastic shopping…

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