Month: April 2018

The Ocean Cleanup is designing and developing the first feasible method to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the ocean. A significant percentage of this plastic drifts into large systems of circulating ocean currents, also known as gyres. Once trapped in a gyre, the plastic will break…
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Scientists are preparing to launch the world’s first machine to clean up the planet’s largest mass of ocean plastic. The system, originally dreamed up by a teenager, will be shipped out this summer to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, between Hawaii and California, and which contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. It will be the…
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Consultation to start later this year as Theresa May continues drive against single-use plastic waste Cotton buds, plastic drinking straws and other single-use plastics could be banned from sale in England next year in the next phase of the campaign to try to halt the pollution of the world’s rivers and oceans. Theresa May hopes…
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La Federación Española de la Recuperación y el Reciclaje (FER) ha presentado en la mañana de hoy la segunda edición del concurso de fotografía “Reciclando”, con el que celebrará el Día Internacional del Reciclaje del próximo 17 de mayo. El certamen convocado por FER quiere dar visibilidad en esa fecha tan especial a los actores…
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(Image copyright: David Jones) Scientists have improved a naturally occurring enzyme which can digest some of our most commonly polluting plastics. PET, the strong plastic commonly used in bottles, takes hundreds of years to break down in the environment. The modified enzyme, known as PETase, can start breaking down the same material in just a…
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Volvo Ocean Race is focusing on taking action to ‘Turn the Tide on Plastic’ – the rapidly growing and critical problem of plastic pollution in the ocean, highlighted by the United Nations Clean Seas campaign. The Volvo Ocean Race supports this much-needed campaign and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Life below water), through the…
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In 2013, Joel Baziuk had a problem. He had too many fishing nets, and no good way to get rid of them. But that was about to change. As operations supervisor of Steveston Harbour Authority, or SHA, just south of Vancouver, British Columbia, Baziuk is responsible for Canada’s largest commercial fishing harbor. At any given time,…
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Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/commonwealth-unites-to-end-scourge-of-plastic Countries from across the Commonwealth have today pledged to eliminate avoidable single use plastic in an ambitious bid to clean up the world’s oceans. Published 15 April 2018 From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, Department for International Development, The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, and The Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP Prime Minister Theresa May announced…
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Approximately 5.25 trillion plastic pieces are floating at the sea surface. The impact of plastic pollution on the lowest trophic levels of the food web, however, remains unknown. Here we show that plastics release dissolved organic carbon (DOC) into the ambient seawater stimulating the activity of heterotrophic microbes. Our estimates indicate that globally up to…
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Cefas raised awareness of CleanAtlantic on their Marine Litter stand at The Commonwealth Marine Science Event, which was held at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton on the 9th April.  The event was a celebration of marine science across the commonwealth attended by High Commissioners from across the Commonwealth, ahead of next weeks Commonwealth…
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