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Editorial: Plastic pollution

The view from the shore anywhere around Victoria is postcard-perfect, but a danger you can’t see is creeping across the waters.

The view from the shore anywhere around Victoria is postcard-perfect, but a danger you can’t see is creeping across the waters.

Pieces of plastic — from bags to fragments so tiny you can barely see them — are collecting in the tissues of sealife and in the giant mass known as the Great Pacific garbage patch. They are choking and strangling sea creatures, and by 2050, estimates say, they will outweigh all the fish in the sea.

Some people say they have walked the beaches and rocky coastline and seen nothing to suggest a cause for alarm. Those such as the Surfrider Foundation, however, who regularly comb the shores, find masses of plastic waste, and scientists are finding the material almost everywhere they look. A recent expedition found Arctic ice laced with tiny bits of plastic.

Of the estimated 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic produced in the past six decades, about 6.3 billion tonnes are still hanging around. Getting rid of it will be a monumental job that we haven’t begun to tackle.

But we can do something to slow the growth of the problem. A lot of the plastics we use, particularly single-use items, could be replaced by alternatives that are biodegradable. Some we can do without altogether.

The latest campaign is over plastic straws. Do you need a straw to drink your favourite beverage out of a clean glass? If you do, why not use a paper one?

This is not a far-away problem, even if you can’t see it from Dallas Road. Think about the unwelcome side-order of plastic you are swallowing with your next mouthful of fish.