Little Green Turtle drowned in the last few days, caught in more than 20 individually snagged fishing lines in the one spot. You can see the lead sinkers of 6 of the lines. There are hundreds of kilometres of junked fishing line in the sea and tons of lead sinkers and lures. Discarded fishing line routinely entangles and kills birds, fish, turtles, frogs, and small mammals; and the hooks that are attached to the snagged line cause internal bleeding if swallowed. And if the hook is embedded in the tongue, which is typical, it prevents the animal from eating, leading to starvation until death finally occurs. Both common and protected species of birds are found with fishing line tangled around their legs, wings and beaks. The restricted ability of entangled wildlife to move leads to drowning, starvation, vulnerability to predators, infections and even limb amputation as the animal struggles against the line or embedded hooks. Monofilament fishing line is not biodegradable and therefore presents serious environmental hazards for years to come. Retrieve all snagged monofilament line wherever you fish, whether yours or others and dispose of it properly in trash containers.
This image was taken on Wednesday 24th June, 2020 by Ian Banks at The Gold Coast but we have similar issues on the northern beaches, even in our local reserve "Cabbage Tree Bay".
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #fishingsucks #turtle #plastic

Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers.
A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels. The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic.
Avantium’s chief executive, Tom van Aken, says he hopes to greenlight a major investment in the world-leading bioplastics plant in the Netherlands by the end of the year. The project has the backing of Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels.
Globally around 300 million tonnes of plastic is made from fossil fuels every year, which is a major contributor to the climate crisis. Most of this is not recycled and contributes to the scourge of microplastics in the world’s oceans. Microplastics can take hundreds of years to decompose completely. “This plastic has very attractive sustainability credentials because it uses no fossil fuels, and can be recycled – but would also degrade in nature much faster than normal plastics do,” says Van Aken.
Avantium’s plant plastic is designed to be resilient enough to contain carbonate drinks. Trials have shown that the plant plastic would decompose in one year using a composter, and a few years longer if left in normal outdoor conditions. But ideally, it should be recycled, said Van Aken.
The bio-refinery plans to break down sustainable plant sugars into simple chemical structures that can then be rearranged to form a new plant-based plastic – which could appear on supermarket shelves by 2023. The path-finder project will initially make a modest 5,000 tonnes of plastic every year using sugars from corn, wheat or beets. However, Avantium expects its production to grow as demand for renewable plastics climbs.
In time, Avantium plans to use plant sugars from sustainable sourced biowaste so that the rise of plant plastic does not affect the global food supply chain.
Article by: Jillian Ambrose (The Guardian)
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #savethisplanet

WHY IT MATTERS what you throw into nature.
A simple fishing line lost into the sea can be the death of a dolphin. Eirik and his team met a pod of almost 200 Bottle-nosed Dolphins along the shores of Port Elizabeth, South Africa last year. A little later they saw that one clearly was struggling to keep up with his friends. His dorsal fin was cut off, but the hook and line still attached to his back. A closer look at some of the pictures he took a few minutes earlier revealed that several of the dolphins had fishing hooks and lines attached to them. The line slowly carves itself through the dorsal fin of the dolphins. Eventually the fin will be cut completely off and it is a certain slow death for the poor dolphin. This time it was in South Africa, but it could be anywhere in the world....
It is estimated that each year about 1 million seabirds and about 100 000 marine mammals are killed due to plastic pollution in the ocean.
Feel free to share this post to help make more people aware of what throwing garbage in nature can lead to.
Pics: Eirik Grønningsæter
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #animals #wildlife