The reduction of plastic pollution in New Zealand’s marine environments
New Zealand is often thought of as a country full of vibrant forests, unique wildlife and alluring oceans. An environmentally friendly haven where littering has largely become a faux pas however a stroll along one of the many beaches usually results in coming across at least a few pieces of plastic partially hidden in the sand or being continuously bounced between the waves. The origin of the trash is puzzling, do we blame ninja litterers? Careless fishermen? Cost cutting corporations? Other countries whose waste is carried to us by currents? Personally I don't care whose fault it is, I just care that we fix it.
Currently many things are being done to reduce and remove plastics from New Zealand’s marine environments but is enough being done? I am currently writing a position paper on the topic of whether NZ needs to do more to reduce the pollution of our marine environment by plastics. The two different viewpoints on the issue that I am exploring are whether enough is being done by New Zealand to reduce marine pollution and whether more needs to be done by New Zealand to reduce marine pollution.
People usually look to the government to lead the way and set the standards when it comes to national and global issues. According to a government statement in Garbage disposal in the marine environment (2015) “New Zealand enforces tough new international regulations to protect the marine environment from garbage pollution by ships, pleasure craft and offshore installations”. This show us, the public, that enough is being done right now because the government is enforcing regulations to protect the marine environment from pollution, so we don’t need to worry, it would cost too much time, effort and money to do anything else.
More needs to be done
There are currently many positive efforts to clean up pollution in the marine
environment but there is also not enough is being done. Even with the government enforcing
international regulations, Morton (2015) reports that more than 25,000kg of
plastic waste was littered in New Zealand each day and a large
amount of that ends up in the ocean. These kinds of figures for pollution levels
are unbelievable but we
still buy drinks in plastics bottles and somehow they still end up in the
ocean. It will cost a lot more time, effort and money to fix this issue but it
needs to be done.
References:
Garbage disposal in the marine environment. (2015). Retrieved from
http://www.maritimenz.govt.nz/Environmental/Garbage-disposal.asp
Morton, J. (2015). More than 25,000kg of
plastic littered in NZ daily. Retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11401696
3 comments:
I like how your references are real recent this is something that I had a bit of trouble with. It id good to see that you have two sides to your essay which I can see will work for a good argument. Your writing is nice and clear and very easy to follow with correct grammar as well. nice work man. I'm looking forward to seeing how the team report is going to turn out with everyone's different research topics.
Marine Environment is something I am quite passionate about and this was the topic I was originally going to look to do so would be really keen to read your full paper to see what your findings were.
I absolutely agree with you on the clean green image we as New Zealand project to the world, where in reality I feel that as a country there is so much more we can do and needs to be done, otherwise we could be heading for disaster.
I was quite astonished as to how much plastic waste is littered in New Zealand each day, that is well above what I would have ever thought the number would be. It is up to each New Zealander to make a choice and we don't always make the more informed choices, but feel with more knowledge to the public and less focus on money of plastic imported good that do nothing but fill our waterways and landfills.
Sounds like you have a similar viewpoint to me - that the government is trying to improve the situation, but it doesn't really seem to be working effectively. And the government does need to be the first take the issue more seriously if they expect the general public to follow as well.
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