Rumbles of disquiet about the multiple and mounting impacts of plastic debris on the marine environment have been growing louder recently and are now seismic. Following the UN Conference of the Sea in Malta, June 2017 and indeed the almost universal broadcast of the BBC’s Blue Planet 2, an increasingly educated public, erupted in outrage as viewers globally witnessed the true scale of marine plastics and visualised their impacts on individual creatures. The dirty secret of plastic is out.

Solid oil, with a few chemical adjustments and additives, these hydrocarbon derivatives sparked the consumer revolution, permitting an endless range of new products to be manufactured on an unprecedented scale. The first truly synthetic plastic was Bakelite, invented in New York in 1907, however the real plastic revolution began in 1957 when Bisphenol A (BPA), originally developed as a synthetic mimic of the female sex hormone oestrogen, was polymerised with Phosgene to produce Polycarbonate. Scientists have long been warning of the threats to human health posed by our plastic obsession and on the health of the oceans.

As zooplankton are known to eat plastic, so does every other marine creature right up the food chain, increasingly damaging the endocrine of the animals at the top - us humans. At the same time as this is the least visible effect of marine micro plastics it is the one with the impact of greatest concern.

Plastic once appeared the perfect solution to the problem of food waste caused in conveying product to customer. It extended the shelf life and the geographical reach of existing commodities and displaced relatively more expensive, though considerably more environmentally benign glass, metal and cardboard. Being relatively cheap, the convenience and versatility of this incredibly useful material saw types and uses grow exponentially until they reached into every corner and recess of modern life. Much has been recognised on the accumulation of single use plastics, along with ‘nurdles', micro plastics and fibres. It is easy to understand the concept of visible plastic litter floating in the sea, though perhaps a little more abstract in the instance of microscopic foam particles which continually wash from synthetic foam or Wet Wipe type tissues manufactured from plastic and when flushed, become part of the all colonising soup of indestructible toxic debris.

Whilst our continued consumption of single or limited use products made from this indestructible material is absurd, perhaps the greater affront to the oceans is the estimated 53 billion lentil sized “nurdles", the pelleted feedstock of the plastics industry, which according to the Scottish charity Fidra inadvertently “escape” into the UK environment alone, before they are even used for their intended purpose. That problem is repeated across the globe.

So, the single most useful material ever devised is now a universal curse for which no cure is on the horizon. Public outrage, “Something must be done!” But what?

Plastics have literally become woven into the very fabric of society to such an extent that a plastic free life is now almost impossible. Plastic waste has been quietly accumulating in the marine environment and shores for generations and in some of the remotest parts of the oceans forming seemingly endless and indestructible gyres of floating rubbish. They have comprehensively blanketed beaches and saturated oceans from plastic bags and PCB poisoned shellfish discovered 10km below the Pacific in the Mariana Trench, throughout the water column to the formerly icebound and inaccessible Arctic Ocean, where large lumps of polystyrene are mysteriously appearing on isolated ice floes. Whether as micro-particles, micro-beads, bottles or bags, plastics are routinely ingested by a multitude of aquatic species and synthetic microfibres have been discovered embedded in the living tissue of filter feeding shellfish, having invaded their flesh like an ingrowing hair. Reports suggest that domestic washing machines are one of the greatest sources of micro fibre pollution, flushing out synthetic flexible needles during wash cycles into watercourses. The filters used by municipality waste water treatment facilities are often incapable of removing these microscopic hairs, permitting them to flow directly into estuaries and into the sea.