Ocean rubbish clean-up plan beached

Lack of funds hits attempts to tackle growing problem
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 8 May 10;

PLANS to tackle the growing problem of marine litter in South-east Asian waters have stalled because of the lack of funds.

The latest United States Academy of Science report says 6.4 million tonnes of litter, including about 13,000 plastic objects per sq km, enter the seas worldwide every year, although some experts put the figure at closer to 20 million tonnes.

The total amount of rubbish in the oceans is not known, but with non-biodegradable plastics and fishing tackle making up the majority of the debris, the problem is worsening every year.

The United Nations Environment Programme has 12 regional seas programmes to tackle the issue of marine litter. In this region, the East Asia plan, drawn up in 2008, is overseen by Cobsea (Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia) and is lagging behind the others in its implementation.

Cobsea coordinator Ellik Adler said: 'The plans are there on paper, but we don't have funds to run the programmes. It's quite a pity as our region is one of the most marine-based in the world. We are surrounded by blue.'

He estimated that US$2 million (S$2.8 million) is needed to get started in the region and create the infrastructure, legislation and education to help solve the problem. He said the money should be coming from regional governments and industry, but that the financial crisis and the number of parties involved mean that no agreement on exactly how the funding will work has been reached.

Meanwhile, to give an idea of the scale of the problem, one plastic bag is estimated to take 1,000 years to biodegrade on land and 450 years in the sea.

'If you put plastic in the sea, it doesn't go anywhere and we just keep dumping more and more. It can create dead zones where nothing lives in the sea in that area,' said Mr Adler at the International Maritime Conference organised by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) last week.

In the north Pacific Ocean, plastics have been caught in a gigantic swirling vortex of currents. As a result, there is an area of rubbish north of Hawaii that is estimated to be the size of Texas and is called the Pacific Trash Vortex.

In this region, the chief problem is caused by fishing nets.

'We find ghost nets left floating around the sea, which will still kill fish for no reason for the next 100 years,' he said.

Marine litter kills more than 100,000 mammals a year and costs millions in clean-up efforts as well as rescues and repairs of boats.

In Singapore, the National Environment Agency has spent about $1.67 million a year on beach cleaning over the past three years.

The debris washed up here mainly consists of driftwood and plastic. Litter found on the beach includes bottles, plastic bags and cigarette butts. About 13 tonnes of rubbish are collected from East Coast's 15km beach every day.

Mr Adler pointed towards the slow but steady rise in the standard of living in this region as one of the main reasons the problem is escalating.

Also in the slums of Madras, Jakarta, Manila and Mumbai, the unregulated use of plastic bags, coupled with a lack of waste collection, means these bags end up in the drains, and eventually the sea.

'There is no easy solution as it's up to many sectors from tourism to fishing and industry to work together,' he said.

It is not just the visible rubbish that is a worry, but also the invisible micro organisms that are transported around the world in the ballast tanks of ships.

As 90 per cent of the world's trade goes by sea, ships are recognised as vectors of invasive species - plants and animals which are new to a region and have a negative impact on their environment, often resulting in huge clean-up costs.

Such species hitch rides on the hulls of ships and in their ballast tanks.

These tanks are filled with water to balance a ship when its cargo is not heavy enough to weigh it down. A ship takes on water as it leaves one port and dumps it at its destination. A large tanker can dump up to 50,000 tonnes of water - the equivalent of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

One 'invader' which came by boat is a Caribbean mussel, which was first discovered here in the 1980s and now dominates canals and drains under tidal influence up to several kilometres inland.

Professor Chou Loke Ming of the National University of Singapore's department of biological sciences said: 'The problem is that an opportunistic species such as this mussel can dominate the environment and cause a loss of native biodiversity.'

For example, heavy rainfall in December 2006 and January 2007 wiped out much of the saltwater life at Pulau Ubin's Chek Jawa, allowing the Caribbean mussel to dominate the area.

And as its larvae are now present in the water, it is also possible for it to be transported in ballast tanks to other regions.

In response to this issue, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in 2004 set up the Convention for the Management of Ship Ballast and Sediments, which 22 countries including the Maldives, Spain and Norway, have already signed, and Singapore is looking to join.

But Mr Zafrul Alam, assistant director of the shipping division of the Maritime and Port Authority, said there are two barriers to joining the IMO convention.

One is that the current technology available is not suitable for all ships. The other is that even if the technology is approved and you have a certificate, the port you are going to can still ask to carry out checks.

However, Associate Professor Darren Sun of NTU has spent the last 12 years working on a nano-crystal membrane, believed to be the first of it kind and capable of eliminating all bacteria.

It could be used to filter water entering or leaving the ballast tanks of a ship.

His material, which is ready to go into pilot tests and is awaiting funding, could go some way to solving shipping concerns and cleaning up the earth's oceans.