Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 242

Plastic makes up only about 10 percent of all the garbage the world produces, yet unlike most other trash, it is stubbornly persistent. As a result, beach surveys around the world consistently show that 60 to 80 percent of the debris that collects on the shore is plastic. Every year, the Ocean Conservancy sponsors an international beach-cleanup day in which more than a hundred countries now take part…. Whether they’re working a beach in Chile, France, or China, volunteers inevitably come across the same stuff: plastic bottles, cutlery, plates, and cups; straws and stirrers, fast-food wrappers, and packaging. Smoking-related items are among the most common. Indeed, cigarette butts – each made up of thousands of fibers of the semisynthetic polymer cellulose acetate – top every list…. For all the dangers posed by floating bags, castaway lighters, and abandoned nets, the most profound and insidious threat may well be the trillions upon trillions of tiny pieces of plastic speckled across the world’s beaches and scattered through its oceans. These itsy bits, collectively known as microdebris, were scarcely on experts’ radar until recently…. The rise in microdebris is partly due to rising plastics production, which leads to an increase in pellets that can get into the environment: they’re now thought to constitute about 10 percent of all ocean debris. It’s also due to the growing use of teensy plastic beads as scrubbers in household and cosmetic cleaning products and for blasting dirt off ships…. But the main source of microdebris is likely macrodebris: the larger pieces of junked plastic that have been fragmented by the sun and waves. Increasingly, experts fear that these bits are just as dangerous to marine wildlife as the lethal necklaces of packing straps and nylon netting that can choke seals and sharks, and even whales.

Source: Extracts from Freinkel (2011: 127–8 and 134–5).

Pollution of the oceans by a variety of plastic items has only recently come to be seen as a potentially serious environmental problem.

Figure 5.3 Population without access to improved water sources, by region, 2015

Source: UNICEF/WHO (2015: 7).

Progress on sanitation has been slower. The MDG target was for 77 per cent of the global population to be using improved facilities by 2015, but only 68 per cent did so. This represents around 700 million people fewer than the target. Some 2.4 billion people did not have access to improved sanitation; of these, seven out of ten lived in rural areas, as did nine out of ten of those still practising open defecation (UNICEF/WHO 2015: 5). Clearly the MDG targets have proved to be an effective tool for encouraging and measuring progress on the provision of safe water and effective sanitation, but there remains much to be done. As a result, the MDGs were replaced in 2012 with a new set of seventeen interlinked Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), covering poverty reduction, gender equality, climate action, sustainable cities, clean energy, and much more.