Cigarettes, PET and glass, the main enemies of the oceans
Sargassum is becoming more and more polluting, due to everything it collects in its path
Despite the efforts of countless organizations that carry out beach clean-ups throughout the year and around the world, waste continues to reach the oceans and their coasts, with cigarettes, PET, and glass being the waste that most infests ecosystems.
“Sadly, after the pandemic, many convenience stores opened near the beaches and glass has been increasing. Glass is also a waste that is not so easy to move and is not so easy to market as reusable or recyclable, so we do not see the cans, but we do see the glass and that has become much more complicated,” said Araceli Ramírez López, representative in the Yucatán peninsula of the Ocean Conservancy organization.
Regarding sargassum, he commented that it is becoming more and more polluting, due to everything it collects along its way, hence the need to promote an educated, intelligent community that is interested in making changes. What is sought is to generate changes from the purchase of products, to establish whether they are needed or not to acquire them, because unfortunately now everything is at hand, you click and it is already at your doorstep, generating a quantity of waste that is sometimes not needed.
“We work with technology, on our phones there is an application that we download and we no longer need a booklet, we no longer need a piece of paper, we send everything there and that automatically reaches international databases, the climate arrives and it reaches several large institutions where they analyze all the waste that we find, who generates it and where it travels,” he shared.
Basically, on the side of the Sian Ka’an reserve in Quintana Roo, there is what is called a “gyre,” which means it is like a whirlpool and what it does is that all the cruise ships that pass by there, even if they say no, they do throw waste, they stay there and then Sian Ka’an has a serious problem, but not because there are people there, but because of all that “gyre” that pulls that trash to the coasts. In these cleanups worldwide, even televisions have been found and once a piano, in Italy.
“Once we did a dynamic to see what we could find and we found a wedding dress, the engagement ring, the suit and all the belongings so that you could have a wedding, so you say, what are we throwing away? Because there are places where you literally find glasses, a telephone, strollers, that is, you find everything,” he warned.
The goal is for young people to change, and to do so it is necessary to make them aware of the situation, educate them, but above all to be consistent as a society and understand that Cancun and Quintana Roo in general do not live off of hotels, but off of the natural resources that exist in the state.
