Final Thought
plastic not so fantastic Our passion is the great outdoors. We love to discover new places, but unfortunately we have encountered all too often the destructive effects of plastic pollution in the most remote corners of the globe. Our mission is to raise awareness about plastic pollution from the United Arab Emirates to the rest of the world. Thus came the idea to combine the two – a great journey with a great cause. The PlasticNotSoFantastic (PNSF) Expedition was born. We both grew up with a strong environmental conscience, particularly in all things relating to plastic. David, through his father’s work as a veterinarian, became aware of the destructive and often fatal effects of plastic pollution in the animal kingdom at an early age. Theresa’s love of the beach and sea was all too often marred by irresponsible beach goers leaving their waste behind, and the increasing quantity of plastic based debris being washed onto the beaches, a significant amount of which was clearly from sources outside of the UAE. David and his father work at the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory here in Dubai. David’s father first coined the term “Fatal Pollution” based on the fact that one of the most common causes of death in animals which come to them for post mortem analysis is as a result of plastic ingestion. The animals are unable to expel the plastic, which forms a calciferous mass in their stomachs, weighing up to 58 kilograms, and they eventually die a slow and painful death. If the animal is lucky enough still to
be alive when it’s delivered to them there is a chance to try and flush the plastic out, but this is very rarely successful. However, in the end, you know that even if you save one animal, there will be hundreds where you won’t succeed. Like with an illness, treating the symptoms doesn’t provide a cure. The only way to provide a cure is to prevent the animals eating plastic in the first place, which means that us humans have to stop creating so much waste and dumping it in the oceans, deserts, mountains and beaches just because we are too lazy to take it home or dispose of it responsibly. Hence, we spend our weekends collecting rubbish on the beach, in the desert and in the mountains. We spent part of our honeymoon cleaning up a wonderful plateau in Oman, which was a favourite picnic spot for Omani’s until the government closed the road to the site because the rubbish problem was getting unmanageable. We do believe that attitudes to waste creation and management are slowly changing in the UAE, nevertheless, the UAE remains one of the highest per capita producers of waste in the world, and there is still consid-
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erable progress to be made both in the UAE and across the globe. The world’s largest concentration of floating plastic waste has accumulated in the North Pacific, between Hawaii and the west coast of the United States, and is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. A second, equally large, polluted area has now been confirmed to exist in the North Atlantic Ocean. The vastness of the oceans makes it difficult to ascertain the extent of current levels of plastic pollution, coupled with the fact that over time plastic breaks down into small particles barely visible to the naked eye. Fish feed on this “plastic plankton” and we feed on the fish, and end up ingesting the toxic cocktail. It’s therefore clear to us that an awareness campaign which focuses on reducing the consumption of single use plastics is essential to target the source of the problem, which is a lack of understanding and environmental consciousness. The PNSF Expedition is not only dedicated to promoting awareness of the consequences of plastic pollution, but we also intend to seek viable alternatives to single use plastics, and to transfer new technologies, community schemes and methods of reducing plastic