PLASTIC FISHES

(by Pablo Burgués)

The other day, watching that humour and science fiction programme entitled Informativos Telecinco (Telecinco news programme), I found out that according to the experts in 2050 there will be more plastic than fishes in the sea. These same gentleman also state that today the amount of plastic waste in our oceans reaches 150.000.000 tons.

I don’t know what you think, but my brain suffers a short-circuit when I’m told about amounts that have more than three zero numbers, so, try as I might, I was unable to imagine how much plastic was all that.

As I am a lively person, eager for knowledge (what in my town we call “a guy with plenty of spare time”), after finding out that information I abandoned my beloved sofa and went out to Ibiza streets looking for answers. I carried out a rigorous experiment to find these answers: I bought a 1,5 litre water bottle, I drank it and when it was empty I put in onto a precision balance that a friend of mine has for reasons that are not necessary to explain now… The exact weight of that bottling was 45 grams (1,5 pounds), which I divided into the 150 million tons of waste and voilà: 3.333.333.333.333,33 (in other words: right now there are more than three fucking billion plastic bottles of 1,5 litre floating along the world seas L)

If we take into account only the Mediterranean it isn’t any better, because it is estimated that 72% of aaaall the waste gathered every year in aaaall its beaches is plastic. Besides being very ugly, this is the reason why more and more specimens of species such as loggerhead sea turtle are dying due to the consumption of this material. Perhaps you would say: “That’s an appropriate name for this creature, because one has to be very loggerhead to eat plastic”. Well, let me tell you that you and me, homo sapiens sapiens who have studied and hold a master from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos also eating plastic every day…

The truth is that when we say that a turtle or a fish “eat” plastic we don’t mean that these animals take a detergent bottle sandwich for lunch, but that they suffer the involuntary consumption of hundreds of tiny pieces of partially decomposed plastic that float along the sea. This rubbish accumulates day after day in their little bodies and when we eat them all that rubbish goes to our stomachs.

Why am I giving you this entire lecture? Well, because Greenpeace wants to warn the Environment Ministry and all her European colleagues so that they do something to solve the severe problem of plastic in the Mediterranean. And I’ve thought that perhaps you have a signature that you don’t use often… And maybe you can lend it to these guys… And maybe all the signatures together count for something, and, well, here you have the link to their website just in case you’ve also got out of bed on the right side.

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Translation: Dora Sales