This Beach Is The Symbolic Stage For The Desperate Battle Worldwide Against Plastic

The plastic comes from everywhere. From north and south, from the north of Africa and from America. The battle against it is an uphill one. Like Sisyphus, damned to push a rock uphill for all eternity, this battleground is the northeastern tip of the island of La Graciosa, part of Canary Archipelago.

Here, Alex Rivera with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), together with volunteers and locals such as Enriqueta Romero, 78, who was born on La Graciosa, fight to collect the massive bulks of plastics piling up on the shore. The battle against microplastics — bits of debris less than five millimeters in length — already seems lost.

In 1950, when Romero was a 10-year-old, the world was producing around 1.7 million tons of plastic a year. In 2016, the amount produced was 335 million tons, according to PlasticsEurope. But the problem is not just the volume of plastic produced, but its life span and the small amount that gets recycled ...The European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC) analyzed the rubbish on European beaches in 2016 and concluded that 84% was plastic. Another study published in Science in 2015 stated that eight million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans every year. Eventually, the oceans return the plastic to the beaches. 

What we are facing, apparently, is one of the scourges of this century. 

According to a study of Ambar beach of La Graciosa, there is an alarming amount of waste smaller than 5 milimeters. 

The study highlighted the fact that 52.7% of the debris found in the sand was plastic fragments and 35.6% was oil products.

Another study concluded that eight million tons of plastic ends up in the oceans every year.

Is the battle lost forever?