13 million metric tonnes of plastic is the equivalent of
one garbage truck of waste every minute of every day, as reported by the World
Resources Institute.
What starts in the rivers always ends up in the oceans, and unmanaged plastic waste poses the biggest threat to marine life and causes significant economic and environmental damage. The tides take the plastics everywhere, much of it reduced to sediments. The plastic gets converted over a period of time into micro-plastics which get consumed by all marine life including fish and sea birds. It's a massive problem and if nothing is done, by 2050 according to one estimate, 99% of seabirds will have ingested plastic and it's estimated that by that point there will be more plastics in the oceans than fish.
A team of social and natural resource
scientists from Natural
Resources Institute and Catalyst Management Services (CMS) Group, India, conducted a formative research in 2019 which helped in deriving a range of actions that
are needed to address the issue of ocean plastic. This collaboration was
extended to Vietnam in 2020, and a new project called 'Systems for Tackling Ocean
Plastic (STOP)' has been conceptualised which is yet to be implemented.
NRI's and collaborators work is around investigating the sources (urban/semi-urban/rural/industrial areas with inadequate solid waste management), drivers and pathways of plastic entering water courses and ultimately to ocean. The team analyses the impact of ocean-bound plastic and is developing a mitigation strategy built around a circular economy for plastic to reduce the 'severe and alarming' effect of plastic waste in select countries of our research. We are identifying interventions, technological options, policies, and regulation needed to mitigate the risks identified.
The NRI's ocean plastic research is led by Associate Professor Ravinder Kumar. Ravi Kumar's research expertise is in natural resource management. He has led research, monitoring, and evaluating projects in sustainable forest management, integrated water resource management, ocean plastic and other sectors such as poverty, livelihoods.
This specific work in India is published in a report and a blog on World Ocean Day and also in a NRI news report highlighting research findings and importance of some of the actions needed. This work led to a recommendation of nine actions needed to stem the flow of plastics to ocean, as captured by the infographic.
