Ridding the sea of plastic

There's no escape: Even in the most remote region, such as this uninhabited sand spit in Setiu, Terengganu, you can find plastic trash. Photo: The Star/Tan Cheng Li

For the past 30 years, the Ocean Conservancy has been organising coastal clean-ups every September, involving half a million volunteers in 100 countries. The volunteers pick up trash in beaches, waterways and oceans and this gives an annual global snapshot of the most persistent and proliferating form of marine debris.

“What we’ve seen in the past three decades is an exorbitant amount of trash being picked up, over 200 million pounds (90 million kilos). The collected items span a wide variety of ordinary and extraordinary things, but what is clear is that the bulk of it is disposable plastic packaging,” says Nicholas Mallos at a symposium on marine litter held during the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi in late May.