The Europe of plastics, 2019
It is estimated that 8 million tons of plastic are rejected into the oceans every year. Or, the equivalent of one dump truck per minute. Europe is the second most polluter of the world. Household waste, fishing nets, “mermaid tears” (microbeads used as raw materials in industry), invisible plastics used in the manufacture of exfoliating creams or toothpaste and, above all, single-use plastics. 80% of the wastes found at sea are coming from the land. It is difficult, today, to found a place on our planet without any trace of plastic. It’s everywhere, in every watercourse, from the beginning of the food chain to the human body.
The micro plastic mission of the Tara Ocean Foundation, coordinated by the Oceanographic Observatory of Banyuls-sur-Mer, permitted to collect 2,700 samples taken from 45 sites located between land and sea.
The samples and the data were collected off the nine estuaries of the Thames, Elbe, Rhine, Seine, Ebro, Rhone, Tiber, Garonne and Loire, at their mouths, downstream and upstream of the first major city located on the rivers. Behind the beauty of the sea, rivers and their landscapes, the sampling nets of the scientists on board of Tara, are full of micro plastic waste.
So how to figure this invisible catastrophe? Samuel Bollendorff, who boarded the Tara, tried to make the images of the infinite beauty of the ordinary of these landscapes dialogue with the microscopic reality of what it contains.
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