From plastics to sunscreen: The growing battle to tackle ocean pollution | Euronews Tech Talks

On March 18, 1967, nan supertanker SS Torrey Canyon struck a reef disconnected nan seashore of Cornwall, United Kingdom, spilling 100,000 tonnes of crude lipid into nan English Channel. 

Beaches successful confederate England, nan French region of Brittany, and Guernsey successful nan Channel Islands were submerged successful heavy sludge. 

More than 15,000 seabirds were killed, and nan spill caused innumerable semipermanent damages to nan marine environment. 

The Torrey Canyon disaster was nan first awesome lipid spill successful European waters. It marked a turning constituent successful nan measurement group interacted pinch oceans, revealing really susceptible marine ecosystems are to human-induced threats. 

To people World Oceans Day connected June 8, Euronews Tech Talks talked to 2 water experts to amended comprehend nan authorities of our oceans and nan precocious and low-tech innovations that tin thief protect them. 

Plastic Odyssey: The alloy connected a mission

Over nan past 4 decades, world integrative accumulation has much than quadrupled, yet recycling has grounded to support pace, pinch rates remaining beneath 10 per cent.

Simon Bernard is nan CEO and co-founder of Plastic Odyssey, a task dedicated to tackling water integrative pollution.

Bernard and a group of researchers embarked connected a circuit astir nan world aboard a investigation alloy to research nan champion solutions for reducing integrative pollution. 

"The thought of a investigation alloy is to beryllium a technological level to study, do research, and development... The alloy acts arsenic a laboratory, truthful for example, nan aft is dedicated to recycling pinch various machines utilized to recycle plastic, trial different solutions and technologies, and train section entrepreneurs," Bernard explained to Euronews. 

Plastic Odyssey has been sailing for 2 and a half years. During nan journey, nan unit stops for 3 weeks successful locations affected by integrative pollution, meets nan locals, institutions, and entrepreneurs to study astir their solutions, and helps support them. 

"That’s rather shocking to realise that location is nary pristine situation anymore, because integrative contamination has impacted each nan places," said Bernard. 

Throughout nan Plastic Odyssey’s journey, Bernard has met galore group tackling integrative contamination and has been impressed by nan cleverness of nan simplest solutions.

"We’ve visited possibly 150 factories and initiatives, and what’s astir absorbing to america is nan ingenuity and nan usage of low-tech solutions," he said. 

"We met a feline successful Lebanon who made nan balanced of a nutrient transportation app but for discarded connection... and I'm reasoning astir Silvio successful Colombia who was building houses retired of integrative waste," Bernard said.

Invisible threats to marine environments

While integrative contamination is simply a visible threat to marine ecosystems, oceans are besides damaged by hazards that are overmuch harder to detect, for illustration chemic pollutants.

Researcher Anneliese Hodge from nan University of Plymouth is studying these analyzable pollutants, and 1 of her astir caller studies focuses connected sunscreen.

The astir harmful components of sunscreen are its UV filters designed to block, absorb, aliases bespeak nan sun’s ultraviolet rays.

"A caller estimation has suggested that astir 10 cardinal tonnes of UV filters are produced annually for nan world market, of which an estimated 6,000 to 14,000 tonnes are released into coral reef zones unsocial annually," Hodge told Euronews. "So this is rather a wide issue," she continued.

Hodge explained that UV filters successful sunscreen tin impact marine ecosystems astatine a molecular, cellular, individual, and organization level. For instance, sunscreen tin harm nan DNA of marine organisms and origin coral bleaching.

Despite nan request for further investigation into this topic, Hodge highlighted respective imaginable solutions to trim nan threats sunscreen poses to marine environments.

Among them is nan encapsulation of UV filters successful biodegradable capsules that activate only upon interaction pinch nan skin.

In addition, Hodge cited nan anticipation of reducing UV filters and alternatively utilizing Sun Protection Factor (SPF) boosters, specialised ingredients that could switch UV filters.

She besides pointed to nan preamble of immoderate regulations to make corporations trim nan UV filters aliases prohibition nan usage of definite products.