Plastic Soup: An Atlas of Ocean Pollution

By Michiel Roscam Abbing

Plastics have transformed every aspect of our lives. Yet the very properties that make them attractive—they are cheap to make, light, and durable—spell disaster when trash makes its way into the environment. Plastic Soup: An Atlas of Ocean Pollution is a beautifully-illustrated survey of the plastics clogging our seas, their impacts on wildlife and people around the world, and inspirational initiatives designed to tackle the problem. 

In Plastic Soup, Michiel Roscam Abbing of the Plastic Soup Foundation reveals the scope of the issue: plastic trash now lurks on every corner of the planet. With striking photography and graphics, Plastic Soup brings this challenge to brilliant life for readers. Yet it also sends a message of hope; although the scale of the problem is massive, so is the dedication of activists working to check it. Plastic Soup highlights a diverse array of projects to curb plastic waste and raise awareness, from plastic-free grocery stores to innovative laws and art installations. 

According to some estimates, if we continue on our current path, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by the year 2050. Created to inform and inspire readers, Plastic Soup is a critical tool in the fight to reverse this trend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Apr 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642830095

Book preview

AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

Microplastics from the Rhode River in Maryland, collected in a manta trawl. Pictured at the laboratory of Dr Lance Yonkos, University of Maryland in 2015.

Plastic dominates our lives. Plastics are synthetic materials derived from petrochemicals. They can be found in all shapes and sizes, ranging from soft and thin to rock-hard and thick. Plastics have become enormously popular over the last seventy years, thanks to their particular properties and extremely low production costs.

We reap the benefits of those features every day. But those same properties turn out to be disastrous for ecosystems. Plastics do not dissolve in water and do not decay. All the plastic that has ever ended up in the environment is still present in some form or other. What plastic does do in the environment, though, is break down into smaller and smaller fragments. These include microplastics, which are mostly so small that they are no longer visible to the naked eye and can easily get into food chains.

United Nations Environment believes plastic litter and microplastics to be one of the biggest environmental problems that the world is facing. The problem has acquired a name, too: plastic soup.

The oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. A misunderstanding persists that there are floating islands of plastic out there—and the few people who sail the seas do sporadically come across floating plastic. However, it’s only possible to understand the scope of the problem after investigating what is floating on the surface, drifting around in the water column, and lying on the seabed. It’s easy to see at the surface level: every wave that breaks on shore leaves some plastic behind, and beaches all over the world have to be cleaned up constantly. Smaller fragments go unnoticed, however, and can never be removed.

Plastic soup is everywhere. There’s no place on Earth nowadays that is genuinely free of plastic: it is in rivers and canals as well as the oceans—in the water, on the land, and even in the air. The accumulation and fragmentation of plastic in the environment means that the benefits of plastic are being overtaken by the drawbacks. More than a thousand animal species are being affected in some way by all that plastic. They are ingesting it, injuring themselves with it or suffocating on it. And all that plastic litter is damaging for humans, too. The truth is difficult to digest—quite literally—and that plastic soup is making us ill. Evidence of damage to health is accumulating.

In a timeframe that is less than the average human lifespan, plastic soup has become a staple on the menu. The rapidly growing global population does not know how to handle the miracle material. The planet is becoming polluted faster than ever, and humankind is going to have to resolve the problem together. If that can’t be done, we are going to saddle future generations with an issue that will plague them for centuries.

The first part of this book addresses the causes of plastic soup, whereas the second part is about inspirational initiatives for wiping plastic soup off the map.

In Ancient Greek mythology, Atlas was one of the Titans. For his part in the Titans’ rebellion against the leader of the gods, Zeus, he was condemned to bear the heavens on his shoulders as punishment. Books of Maps were later named after him. Plastic Soup: An Atlas of Ocean Pollution presents a thematic perspective on the worldwide plastic soup problem and possible solutions. The overall message is crystal clear: combating plastic soup is going to be a titanic struggle.

ON THE MAP

1

PLASTIC FANTASTIC

Plastic sticks from cotton swabs are one of the most common items found on many countries’ beaches. Italy has become the first country to ban them.

DISPOSABLE PLASTIC

The photographer Gregg Segal portrayed a number of Americans lying among newspapers, cans, and lots of plastic, which represented the amount of waste that these people had produced in a single week. His series from 2014 is confrontational; every one of us could have been lying there with just as much rubbish. Over recent decades, nothing has changed more than the composition and quantity of our waste. And there’s a reason: