Plastic Pollution: You Don't Realise How Bad it is Until You're Swimming in it

Me trying to look cool and young in Vietnam! Plastics is the message, but its hard to illustrate dramatically.

I have recently returned from cycling across part of Vietnam. The country is interesting, people incredibly friendly and the Vietnamese organisation and leadership really impressive. Especially as we were restricted by the typhoon and the washing away of the railway tracks which involved muliple itinerary changes.

It was a pure holiday for me, but there is one unfortunate aspect that stuck in my mind.

We had two opportunities to go swimming in the sea - in some beautiful places.

But my abiding memory is the plastic pollution. Naively, I had not really thought about it before. In the UK it is usually too cold for me to go swimming in the sea: Vietnam is different.

The level of plastics you can see in the water in Vietnam is horrendous. And that is the obvious, when most has broken into small particles not easily visible to the native eye.

Did you know:

12 million tons of plastic reach the sea each year.

There are already c. 51 million microscopic pieces there, weighing c. 270,000 tons.

One estimate has 100 million marine animals die each year from plastic waste ingested or being tangled up in it.

The US Oceanic Administration estimate it takes 450 years to break down the plastic.

My perception, while we in the UK are hardly squeaky clean, the worst countries are in the Far East with India, China and Indonesia holding the top three positions, although the Philippines hit the top in some charts and from observation I am sure Vietnam is not far behind.

And as sea water circulates the globe it will only get worse here.

Following the mantra "think global act local what we can do? Probably not much. But reducing the use of plastic, particularly single use items and participating in a marine clean up when we are on holiday. Hardly earth shattering but its something we can all do.