This week’s episode is brought to you from the Groot Constantia which is the first wind estate in South Africa. A professor in Harvard has invented what is called a bionic leaf. The leaf is able to produce liquid fuel from sunlight. This is yet another brilliant step in the right direction and helps to move us away from the old idea that we must burn things for our energy. This simply is not the case.
Scientists are discovering that there is indeed ways to generate fuel from not burning things. We also hear about micro plastics and how they are a massive issue for the environment and the sea bed.
In today’s world, plastic is an essential raw material. Since their invention in the 1930’s, plastics have become ubiquitous in the manufacture of everyday products. In 2012 the plastics industry accounted for more than 1.4 million jobs in over 62,000 companies across the European Union.1 As useful and versatile as plastics are, however, their unchecked disposal on an unprecedented scale is resulting in significant global impacts on wildlife from marine environment pollution. Micro plastics are particularly problematic, and as the life cycle comes full circle, it is feared that they could bring adverse impacts for humans too.
Consider this; a human can eat a fish that has consumed micro plastics in the sea. Then the fish will eventually be eaten by humans. Then what happens to the human? The human can get cancer or worse and potentially die.
There was an interesting statistic that came out today talking about how the oxygen levels in the ocean will be so low by 2030 that it will not be able to support ANY life in the sea. We have 14 years to prevent this. If this actually becomes reality it will be a disaster. We are in danger of realising this damage is too late and reading/watching this in hindsight and regretting it. Let’s prevent that from happening. We are the last people that are capable of changing the way the word is working.
Links: https://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-massive-problem-of-microplastics/2000127.article ,
By Alex Mitchison
