Teenagers Joel and Nora Rodin, who live in Malmo, Sweden, have spent part of their Christmas holidays in Eden removing rubbish from the beaches.
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Joel and Nora moved to Sweden, where they attend Bladin’s International School, a year ago but over the years have spent a lot of time in Eden.
Community service projects are part of the curriculum at Joel and Nora’s school.
“Since we were heading down to Eden during our Christmas break we thought we could combine this trip together with a project to remove plastic rubbish from beaches,” Joel and Nora said.
“This project is important to us since we noticed more and more plastic on the beaches we have visited.”
“We have collected all sorts of plastic from the beaches around Eden, from bottles to ropes, from fishing lines to shopping bags, from food wrappers to plastic caps.
“We have not only found plastic, we have also found metal tins, glass bottles and cardboard, food waste and a lot of other human derived products.
Joel and Nora said the use of plastic products had exploded over the last 70 years and now people could not think about “normal life” without them.
They said it was disturbing that half of the plastic produced was for single use.
“Most of this plastic is for packaging like bags and more than 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide with a “working life” of only about 15 minutes,” they said.
Millions of tonnes of plastic – which can take hundreds of years to degrade – ended up in the ocean.
Joel and Nora said that in some of the most polluted spots in the ocean, plastic outweighted plankton.
“Whales get entangled in derelict fishing gear and may endure a slow painful death over months to years. Thousands of kilometres from human habitation on a remote island in the Pacific, albatross chicks are starving because their parents mistake floating plastic debris for food,” they said.
Joel and Nora’s message is clear: reduce, reuse and recycle. “Where we can, choose items without plastic packaging and make sure when we do use plastic items that we dispose of them properly,” they said.