Plastic seas
An exhibition that raises awareness of the problem of marine pollution in the form of plastic waste and encourages visitors to take action to reduce it.
Bottles, cigarette butts, bags, lighters, cotton buds, fishing lines, shoe soles, etc. After rough weather like the recent Storm Gloria, surging waves return large quantities of litter produced by human activity to the coast. Beaches are covered with the waste that ends up in the sea due to poor management and lack of public awareness. Most of it consists of plastic objects. The items we can see on the beach are just one small example of one of the main environmental problems of today. To raise awareness of this, Roca Barcelona Gallery is hosting the exhibition Plastic seas. From the problem to the solution until 30 April.
It is estimated that each year between 8 and 12 million tonnes of waste go into the seas and oceans. The most abundant fraction of waste is plastics. It is a light material, so the objects often float, are carried on sea currents and can travel large distances. The tides return some of the plastic waste to the coast, but a large proportion ends up on the seabed. In any case, the problems caused by plastics on both the surface and in the depths of the sea are aggravated by how long this material takes to degrade: from several months to hundreds of years.
Although we do not see it, plastic is flooding the sea. So-called microplastics are fragments less than 5 millimetres in size. The sources include cosmetics, fabrics and certain industrial materials but also objects on the surface or on the seabed break up into increasingly smaller pieces and also turn into microplastics.
All of this waste has a direct impact on the biodiversity and balance of marine ecosystems. For example, many marine animals (including birds) get tangled up in objects such as bags, nets and string or suffer direct injuries that can kill them. However, in addition, microplastics and the chemical substances of which they are composed are ingested by many creatures and enter the food cycle.
It is currently hard to find anywhere in the world free of these materials and everyone needs to be involved in putting an end to this problem. The exhibition at Roca Barcelona Gallery seeks to raise awareness of this issue and publicise ways of alleviating this global problem.
See more information through this link.