Garbage in the oceans, an international challenge

"Garbage in the oceans, an international challenge" is a journalistic analysis of the presence of plastics in all the seas of the planet. Urban waste, especially plastic bags and packaging, has become one of the major problems of marine pollution. Year after year, the problem is increasing; every year, more than six million tons of plastic are dumped into the sea, causing havoc among the fauna and problems of pollution and navigation.

The Barcelona Provincial Council states that 80% of the volume and 35% of the weight of the waste it collects on the beaches is packaging. It allocates 80% of its cleaning budget to solving this problem, which would be reduced with the implementation of a packaging return system.

-The oceans have become gigantic landfills. Widespread mismanagement of urban waste is polluting the seas to unprecedented levels. This serious problem has prompted the UN and other international organizations to issue a global warning. A study by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has quantified the amount of garbage accumulating on the seabed, in the water column, on the sea surface and on the coasts at millions of tons.

- An estimated 6.4 million tons of waste end up in the sea each year. Between 60% and 80% are plastics, with peaks of up to 95% in some areas. The largest percentage of these are bags, but beverage containers, cans or cigarette filters account for almost half of the total.

-The litter garbage cans on the beaches fill up every day and containers are abandoned everywhere. Added to this invasion of waste is the garbage that floats in, dumped from other parts of the coast, boats or even neighboring countries. Despite the cleaning services, walking along a beach has become a nightmare: the tide line is an endless stream of floating objects, mostly plastics, thrown back by the sea.

-A 2009 UNEP report states that between 31% and 43% of the waste found on Baltic beaches is packaging, cans and caps. In the Mediterranean, the figure exceeds 80%, according to recent studies.

-With the exception of Croatia and Israel, no country bordering the Mediterranean has implemented a container return system (DRS), which achieves high levels of recovery and recycling of light beverage containers. The serious problem of container dumping in the marine environment would be almost 100% solved if the DRS were implemented in the riparian countries.