A French Sailor's Personal 'Plastic Odyssey'
From the deck of the cargo ship he was working on, Bernard was stunned to discover mountains of rubbish piled up in Hann Bay, once a white sandy beach that had become an open sewer in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
Thickets of rubbish were almost everywhere along the coast, "washing into the sea with the tides and waves," the 34-year-old sailor told AFP in an interview.
It was, he said, a terrible shock. "At sea, you don't see the plastic."
Deeply moved by seeing fishermen pulling tangled webs of plastic from their nets, Bernard -- newly graduated from France's Merchant Navy -- enlisted another engineer, Alexandre Dechelotte, to embark on what he dubbed "Plastic Odyssey".
The plan was to complete a round-the-world expedition aboard a 40-metre (130-foot) laboratory ship to raise awareness at their many ports of call -- especially among children -- about the devastating impact of the 20 tonnes of plastic waste dumped into the oceans every minute of every day.
The three-year expedition, which partnered with local associations along their route, is almost complete.
Bernard secured financial sponsors, starting with a major French cosmetics brand that promoted the partnership as part of its commitment to increase the proportion of recycled plastic in its products.
But he said he was under no illusions: he knows that his initiative has had a modest impact on the global fight against plastic pollution.
He is also aware of earlier projects with similar goals that fell short of their ambitions.
The Ocean Cleanup launch by 18-year-old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat in 2013 - targeting the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California -- attracted money and attention but was hampered by design flaws and logistical limitations. A recent reboot of the system has shown greater potential for plastic removal at scale.
Another initiative launched from France in 2018, the SeaCleaners, also reported disappointing yields of plastic pollution, and folded operations last year under the shadow of financial mismanagement.
But Bernard said the cause was too important to ignore, and aimed to prove that even small-scale efforts were critical in striving for a future with less plastic. Plastic Odyssey today has a staff of 35.
"The real solution to plastic pollution is to avoid using it," he said.
Nearly 200 nations are huddled in Geneva this week and next to forge a treaty to tackle the plastics crisis, and one of the most divisive issues on the table is whether to aim for reducing plastics production at the source, rather than simply cleaning up pollution after the fact.
Giving up his dream of piloting ferries off the Normandy coast, Bernard left France on October 1, 2022. He is currently in Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, and is nearing the end of his 30 three-week stops in three continents.
His odyssey has taken him across the Mediterranean Sea as well as the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
During stops in Marseille, Beirut, Dakar, Recife, Madras (Chennai) and two dozen other ports, he met with local associations, start-ups and companies working to collect, sort or recycle plastic.
He marvels, he said, at the "inventiveness" of the people he met, especially those who have lost everything.
He recalled an entrepreneur in Lebanon who collected recyclable household waste door-to-door from 60,000 people in a country that no longer has a public service for disposing of plastic.
Two and a half years into his adventure Bernard gave up his apartment, and he now lives on the boat.
The Plastic Odyssey has catalogued more than hundred local solutions for doing without plastic, which is derived from petroleum.
Bernard has adopted several of them, including one "that works very well on board the boat" to make water drinkable, eliminating the need for plastic bottles.
"This has saved us 25,000 bottles of water in two years -- almost a tonne of plastic," he calculated. The three-year expedition partnered with local associations along the route AFP The Plastic Odyssey has catalogued more than a hundred local solutions for doing without plastic AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Int'l Business Times
2 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
With Poetry And Chants, Omanis Strive To Preserve Ancient Language
Against the backdrop of southern Oman's lush mountains, men in traditional attire chant ancient poems in an ancient language, fighting to keep alive a spoken tradition used by just two percent of the population. Sitting under a tent, poet Khalid Ahmed al-Kathiri recites the verses, while men clad in robes and headdresses echo back his words in the vast expanse. "Jibbali poetry is a means for us to preserve the language and teach it to the new generation," Kathiri, 41, told AFP. The overwhelming majority of Omanis speak Arabic, but in the mountainous coastal region of Dhofar bordering Yemen, people speak Jibbali, also known as Shehri. Researcher Ali Almashani described it as an "endangered language" spoken by no more than 120,000 people in a country of over five million. While AFP was interviewing the poet, a heated debate broke out among the men over whether the language should be called Jibbali -- meaning "of the mountains" -- or Shehri, and whether it was an Arabic dialect. Almashani said it was a fully-fledged language with its own syntax and grammar, historically used for composing poetry and proverbs and recounting legends. The language predates Arabic, and has origins in Semitic south Arabian languages, he said. He combined both names in his research to find a middle ground. "It's a very old language, deeply rooted in history," Almashani said, adding that it was "protected by the isolation of Dhofar". "The mountains protected it from the west, the Empty Quarter from the north, and the Indian Ocean from the south. This isolation built an ancient barrier around it," he said. But remoteness is no guarantee for survival. Other languages originating from Dhofar like Bathari are nearly extinct, "spoken only by three or four people," he said. Some fear Jibbali could meet the same fate. Thirty-five-year-old Saeed Shamas, a social media advocate for Dhofari heritage, said it was vital for him to raise his children in a Jibbali-speaking environment to help keep the language alive. Children in Dhofar grow up speaking the mother-tongue of their ancestors, singing along to folk songs and memorising ancient poems. "If everyone around you speaks Jibbali, from your father, to your grandfather, and mother, then this is the dialect or language you will speak," he said. The ancient recited poetry and chants also preserve archaic vocabulary no longer in use, Shamas told AFP. Arabic is taught at school and understood by most, but the majority of parents speak their native language with their children, he said. After the poetry recital, a group of young children nearby told AFP they "prefer speaking Jibbali over Arabic". But for Almashani, the spectre of extinction still looms over a language that is not taught in school or properly documented yet. There have been recent efforts towards studying Jibbali, with Oman's Vision 2040 economic plan prioritising heritage preservation. Almashani and a team of people looking to preserve their language are hoping for support from Dhofar University for their work on a dictionary with about 125,000 words translated into Arabic and English. The project will also include a digital version with a pronunciation feature for unique sounds that can be difficult to convey in writing. There have been recent efforts towards studying Jibbali, with Oman's Vision 2040 economic plan prioritising heritage preservation AFP
Int'l Business Times
2 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
Indigenous Communities Plead For Action At Plastic Pollution Talks
Indigenous communities from North America are at talks on a global treaty on plastic pollution in Geneva, pleading the case for the environment they depend upon, which is slowly being choked by microplastics. In the grounds of the United Nations headquarters, overlooking Lake Geneva and the Alps beyond, a chant suddenly drifted through the humid summer air: a "water song". Standing barefoot in a circle, six women and a young man from multiple North American Indigenous communities decided to do a spontaneous purification ritual. A melancholic second chant follows, dedicated to the well-being "until the seventh generation" of "all the delegates" from the 184 countries attempting to thrash out what would be the first international treaty on tackling the worldwide ever-growing scourge of plastic pollution. The UN-hosted talks, which began last Tuesday, resume on Monday for four more days, with oil-producing states and the so-called ambitious group of nations still far apart on what the treaty should encompass. The young man in the middle of the circle, wearing a hat with two feathers attached, hands each of the six women a bowl containing burning seal fat and plant powders. With both hands, Suzanne Smoke, from the Williams Treaties First Nations in Ontario, Canada, moved as if to catch the rising smoke, rubbing it on her face and body. Panganga Pungowiyi, an activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network, was also in the circle. She comes from Alaska, near the Bering Strait. She is asking negotiators to craft a plastic pollution treaty that ensures justice, particularly for the most vulnerable communities, she told AFP. "We carry knowledge; it's our responsibility -- our duty -- to share the information given to us by the ecosystems," Pungowiyi said, explaining her presence at the talks. Alaska is affected by toxic chemicals, some of which come from plastic or from oil exploration. "Toxic products travel to the north, through ocean currents and air currents," she said. Henri Bourgeois Costa, an environmental and plastic pollution expert at the Tara Ocean Foundation, explained Alaska's predicament. "Given the functioning of the major ecosystem cycles, Alaskan populations are already the most affected by mercury and PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) pollution -- industrial heavy metals now banned in developed countries -- even though Alaska doesn't use them," he told AFP. The currents, which brought plenty of nutrients and schools of fish to the northwestern US state's residents, are now also bringing vast quantities of microplastics, he said. A 2020 study from Washington State University demonstrated that a chemical additive used in the manufacture of car tyres, 6PPD, had "deleterious effects on the reproduction of salmon", one of the most widespread fish in Alaska, Bourgeois Costa said. A compound derived from 6PPD -- a preservative used to slow tyre degradation -- comes off the rubber onto the roads, and gets into the water cycle, the study showed. "No more fish -- no more seals: no more food," Pungowiyi said. People can see the diseases suffered by birds and mammals in the surrounding environment, which ultimately go on to affect their own children, she said. "We are exposed through food, water and forages, because we forage for our food," said Pungowiyi. Aakaluk Adrienne Blatchford, an activist from a small Alaskan village, who came to the Geneva talks with financial support from an association, put it bluntly: "If animals die, we die." She spoke at a conference staged on the sidelines of the negotiations, which are struggling to find a consensus that would stop the amount of plastic pollution from growing. "We rely on unhealthy products," Blatchford said, adding: "It's becoming harder and harder to maintain our food security." And "there is no alternative", she added, with prices as high as "$76 for an imported frozen chicken" at the supermarket. This is a trap for economically fragile populations living in "a symbiotic relationship with the world", she said. "We need a collective decision on how to handle this crisis," she insisted, hoping that the treaty will include a list of banned chemical additives. The plastics treaty talks are being held inside the UN's Palais des Nations complex. During the ritual, held beneath a tree in the grounds outside, Blatchford stood with her eyes closed, tears rolling down her face. Global plastic production in one year AFP The Chugach Mountains and Alaska's biggest city Anchorage seen from across the waters of the Knik Arm AFP Delegates are meeting in the main assembly hall at the UN Palais des Nations in Geneva AFP
Int'l Business Times
4 days ago
- Int'l Business Times
Restored Nagasaki Bell Rings In 80 Years Since A-bomb
Twin cathedral bells rang in unison Saturday in Japan's Nagasaki for the first time since the atomic bombing of the city 80 years ago, commemorating the moment the atrocity took place. On August 9, 1945, at 11:02 am, three days after a nuclear attack on Hiroshima, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. After heavy downpours Saturday morning, the rain stopped shortly before a moment of silence and ceremony in which Nagasaki mayor Shiro Suzuki urged the world to "stop armed conflicts immediately". "Eighty years have passed, and who could have imagined that the world would become like this? "A crisis that could threaten the survival of humanity, such as a nuclear war, is looming over each and every one of us living on this planet." About 74,000 people were killed in the southwestern port city, on top of the 140,000 killed in Hiroshima. Days later, on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, marking the end of World War II. Historians have debated whether the bombings ultimately saved lives by bringing an end to the conflict and averting a ground invasion. But those calculations meant little to survivors, many of whom battled decades of physical and psychological trauma, as well as the stigma that often came with being a hibakusha. Nagasaki resident Atsuko Higuchi told AFP it "made her happy" that everyone would remember the city's victims. "Instead of thinking that these events belong to the past, we must remember that these are real events that took place," the 50-year-old said. "In the end... when war breaks out, those who suffer the most are the little children or the mothers raising them." On Saturday, the two bells of Nagasaki's Immaculate Conception Cathedral rang together for the first time since 1945. The imposing red-brick cathedral, with its twin bell towers atop a hill, was rebuilt in 1959 after it was almost completely destroyed in the monstrous explosion just a few hundred meters away. Only one of its two bells was recovered from the rubble, leaving the northern tower silent. With funds from US churchgoers, a new bell was constructed and restored to the tower, and chimed Saturday at the exact moment the bomb was dropped. The cathedral's chief priest, Kenichi Yamamura, said the bell's restoration "shows the greatness of humanity". "It's not about forgetting the wounds of the past but recognising them and taking action to repair and rebuild, and in doing so, working together for peace," Yamamura told AFP. He also sees the chimes as a message to the world, shaken by multiple conflicts and caught in a frantic new arms race. "We should not respond to violence with violence, but rather demonstrate through our way of living, praying, how senseless it is to take another's life," he said. Nearly 100 countries were set to participate in this year's commemorations, including Russia, which has not been invited since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Israel, whose ambassador was not invited last year over the war in Gaza, was in attendance. This year, "we wanted participants to come and witness directly the reality of the catastrophe that a nuclear weapon can cause", a Nagasaki official said last week. An American university professor, whose grandfather participated in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapons, spearheaded the bell project. During his research in Nagasaki, a Japanese Christian told him he would like to hear the two bells of the cathedral ring together in his lifetime. Inspired by the idea, James Nolan, a sociology professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, embarked on a year-long series of lectures about the atomic bomb across the United States, primarily in churches. He managed to raise $125,000 from American Catholics to fund the new bell. When it was unveiled in Nagasaki in the spring, "the reactions were magnificent. There were people literally in tears", said Nolan. Many American Catholics he met were also unaware of the painful history of Nagasaki's Christians, who, converted in the 16th century by the first European missionaries and then persecuted by Japanese shoguns, kept their faith alive clandestinely for over 250 years. This story was told in the novel "Silence" by Shusaku Endo, and adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese in 2016. He explains that American Catholics also showed "compassion and sadness" upon hearing about the perseverance of Nagasaki's Christians after the atomic bomb, which killed 8,500 of the parish's 12,000 faithful. They were inspired by the "willingness to forgive and rebuild".
