World Oceans Day: IAEA Helps Reduce Plastic Pollution

Oceans provide over 50% of our oxygen, control climate and feed billions of people every year. Their ecosystems are increasingly under threat from plastic waste. (Photo: Modified from Mstyslav Chernov/CC BY SA 3.0)

The ocean and its wildlife are strangled in plastic. About 10% of the 100 million tonnes of plastic that the world produces every year ends up in the ocean. This debris poses a threat to animals, which ingest it or get entangled in it, and also to people who eat the fish contaminated by the chemicals that the debris releases.

One way to prevent this contamination is by replacing some of the plastics we use with biodegradable material. Through research and training, the IAEA is helping countries do exactly that and thereby reduce the world's plastic trash. IAEA experts help scientists manufacture biodegradable plastics using polymers that derive from plants and animals, a process that involves the use of radiation.

"Take chitin-chitosan, a polymer you get from the crust of shrimp shells," said Agnes Safrany, radiation chemist at the IAEA. "With radiation, you can turn it into powder, and you can use this powder to manufacture films and plastics that can eventually disintegrate into the environment."

Read more:

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/world-oceans-day-iaea-helps-reduce-plastic-pollution