Synchronized Swimmers Perform Their World Championship Routine In A Pool Filled With Plastic Waste And The Reaction Was Priceless

Source:https://www.treehugger.com/

Two teen swimmers from Britain performed a synchronized routine in a swimming pool filled with plastic to show the reality of how sea animals live in their polluted home everyday. 

17-year-old Kate Shortman and 18-year-old Isabelle Thorpe of Bristol, England attempted to perform their World Championship synchro routine while plastic bags were getting caught on their legs and heads every time they came up for air. Bottles and trash were floating everywhere as they dove underwater for the dance.


This performance was requested by the Big Bang Fair organizers for the annual science fair they hold that is catered to up-and-coming scientists and engineers in order to raise awareness of the existing state of the oceans. A powerful statement about the effects of all the plastic waste pollution on in the planet was written on the Big Bang Fair blog:

“Unsurprisingly, [the] young synchro pair… struggled to perform their routine swimmingly in a training pool littered with thousands of items of floating plastic. Getting in the way of their normally effortless-looking performance were hundreds of single-use plastic drinking bottles, not to mention a ‘sea’ of plastic toiletries, plastic bags and plastic food containers.”

Watching this performance will make any person uncomfortable, thinking of swimming around all that garbage, and yet this is what fish, birds and marine life experience every day in the oceans. The feeling of guilt can also be an accompaniment because each citizen has made a contribution to this waste, in one way or another. 

Source:https://www.bbc.co.uk/


Wasteful consumption habits, along with ignorant commercial packaging design on the manufacturer´s end is a continuing force that drives the absurd amount of plastic into the oceans and other bodies of water. 

According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, there is already an existing 150 million tons of trash found in the oceans, and in every minute that passes, a truckload more of plastic is thrown into the ocean which totals to eight million tons of trash a year that gets dumped to the home of sea animals. This amount will be doubled in 2030 if nothing is done to prevent this from being a daily occurrence. 

Scientists believe that plastic pollution affects all depths of the ocean and its habitants. This was proven when they tested crustaceans living 11km below in the Mariana trench and found that 100% of these species had plastic in their guts. 

Global efforts have been making a headway by trying to develop a circular economy wherein plastics can be reused more often, instead of bring thrown in the trash after a single-use. 

What has your country been doing to lessen the use of plastic?

 

 

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