‘It gets your stomach churning’: the team wading through nappies to clean up Bali’s waterways – the Guardian

Plastic bags, bottles and other trash entangled in spent fishing nets litter the potentially beautiful Jimbaran beach on the island of Bali, Indonesia (by Onny Carr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Every week, the Sungai Watch staff don waders and gloves and plunge into the waterways around the Indonesian island of Bali, where they have strung up their big plastic barriers. Along with volunteers, they work their way through the heaps of waste that has built up against the barriers, stuffing it into rubbish bags and slowly, steadily, clearing the filth. The work is gruelling, and yet there is deep satisfaction, even if just temporarily, in watching the rivers open up again. “You do get used to it, strangely enough. But you always need at least a few minutes to adapt as you go into a river….”

Hann Bay, Senegal: from coastal idyll to industrial dumping ground – in pictures – the Guardian

Burning garbage on beach of Hann Bay (Peter A. Harrison CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

It’s mid-morning on a sunny day and Yvette Yaa Konadu Tetteh’s arms and legs barely make a splash as she powers along the blue-green waters of the River Volta in Ghana. This is the last leg of a journey that has seen Tetteh cover 450km (280 miles) in 40 days to become the first person known to swim the length of the waterway.

It’s an epic mission but with a purpose: to find out whatis in the water and raise awareness of pollution in Ghana…

The Fantastical Mind of Benjamin Von Wong – Jejune Magazine

Benjamin Von Wong (by Peter Durand, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Bringing an idea to life takes innovation, passion and a whole lot of patience. What’s more powerful is if the creation brings people to another world for just a moment and sparks a new notion in the viewers…Benjamin Von Wong is doing it as we speak. The Canadian-born artist is a big advocate for Ocean Plastics and has been creating art pieces to bring awareness to the most critical issue faced today — Pollution…

Don’t look away: This book is a wake-up call to our ‘monstrous’ waste crisis and how to solve it – EuroNews

Wasteland Cover Image (courtesy of Simon and Schuster UK via publisher website).

I’m only three pages into Wasteland when a stat first unnerves me: “It is forecast that by 2050 we will be producing a further 1.3 billion tonnes [of waste] a year.”

It already feels like the world is weighed down with waste. And I’d (somewhat naively) hoped that, given today’s talk of sustainability, recyclable materials and circular economies, we’d be headed the other way by 2050 – towards a less wasteful world…

My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean – the Conversation

‘Bounty Pilfered’ (center), ‘Newer Laocoön’ (left) and ‘Threnody’ (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022 (by Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND via the Converstion).

“I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold…Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning. My work collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii…

Surprising Creatures Lurk in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – Scientific American

Polyethylene heat welded sculpture made to demonstrate the great Oceanic Gyres created by waste. This artwork is part of a collection titled "The creation of Plastikos" (by Simon MAX Bannister, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia).

Scientists have long known that critters such as worms, crustaceans and mollusks could make their home on plastic debris. Animals have even crossed the Pacific Ocean on these makeshift rafts after a devastating tsunami struck Japan in 2011. But new research published on April 17 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution adds two details that could be concerning for existing ecosystems. First, it finds that plastic is providing a home for coastal species to thrive in the open ocean thousands of miles from shore. Second, some of these species are reproducing despite the alien environment…

Here’s why a California beach town just banned balloons – the Grist

The Blue Balloon (by Simon James CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr)

Celebrations in a beachside California city will soon have to take place without an iconic, single-use party favor: balloons.

The city council of Laguna Beach, about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles, banned the sale and use of all types of balloons on Tuesday, citing their contribution to ocean litter as well as risks from potential fires when they hit power lines…

Regional Emmy® Award-Winning TRASH TALK – NOAA

Video Still from TRASH TALK Special Feature (by USOCEAN.gov and NOAA)

Don’t you think it’s time we all have an honest trash talk? Ocean Today, in partnership with the NOAA Marine Debris Program, presents Regional Emmy® Award-winning TRASH TALK, a 15-minute special feature on marine debris for World Ocean Day. It is specially designed to be part of your World Ocean Day festivities and beyond…