Plastic Crisis: Cannot Be Business As Usual Anymore

Fiji and the Pacific are facing a plastic pollution crisis and if the business-as-usual scenario continues, we are going to be drowning in plastics even more than we are now.

This was the statement made by researcher and Blue Prosperity Fiji Environment coordinator Andrew Paris at the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Conference on Ocean Science and Ocean Management in Nadi yesterday.

“You go to the picnic spots on the beaches, plastic. So, our research is verifying, or ground truthing an issue that we knew all along,” Mr Paris said.

“It is not just research from Fiji in the Pacific. Its global data sets that are also putting numbers to the problem that we all knew about.

“So there are reasons why we have, we’re facing a plastic pollution crisis, that’s unique. We do not have the capacity to deal with all the plastic waste that we are producing right now.”

He added that while there was some political will to address the issue in the region, it was still not enough.

Research 

He also shed light on his research, which found plastics on sea creatures.

“When I started doing my research, so my research around Fiji, I was collecting water samples. I was collecting fish; I collected kai (mussels) from all around Fiji,” Mr Paris said.

“I even went to Tonga and I sailed from Tonga to Fiji and I collected water samples all along the way.

“In a nutshell, we find plastics everywhere in the water, in the fish, in our kai (mussels), all the kai collected in Fiji had at least one plastic in it.

Andrew Paris at work.

“Turn off the tap and lessen the number of plastics that are being imported and used.”

He added that the business could not continue with the business-as-usual scenario.

“We are going to find that plastics will be an number of plastics in our food sources will be much more much more common.”

He said the decision by the Solomon Islands to ban the use of single use plastics was the step in the right direction to solve this problem.

“The pacific should take their cue from that. We do not have recycled plants in Fiji. It has to be shipped offshore for recycling.

“In Fiji, only plastics that are properly recycled are PET bottles.

“If you do not have the necessary policies, laws regulations, we will see what we are seeing now. Plastic crisis!”

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