Submitted Ideas

Protect Man and Fishes from Microplastics

A 2016 UN report documented over 800 animal species contaminated with plastic via ingestion or entanglement—a figure 69% greater than that reported in a 1977 review, which estimated only 247 contaminated species. Of these 800 species, 220 have been found to ingest microplastic debris in their natural habitat.
Plastic ingestion occurs across taxa within different trophic levels, including marine mammals, fish, invertebrates, and fish-eating birds. Plastic particles are often found concentrated in an organism’s digestive tract during carcass dissection and laboratory research.

Seafood consumption represents one pathway for human microplastic exposure. As of 2015, global seafood intake represented 6.7% of all protein consumed and approximately 17% of animal protein consumption. Global per capita seafood consumption is over 20 kg/year. The total fish demand for Nigeria based on the 2014 population estimate of 180million is 3.32m Mt. The domestic fish production from Aquaculture, Artisanal and Industrial fisheries for 2014 is 1.123m Mt. Also in 2014, fisheries contributed 0.48% to the Agriculture GDP and contribution of Agriculture to GDP (2014) was 20.24%.
Global seafood trade in 2016 was $132.6 billion, and over 90% of Nigerian seafood was imported from geographic regions with significant waste leakage and pelagic plastic pollution. Roughly half of seafood is farmed (e.g., aquaculture) and half is wild-caught.

In combating the effect of Microplastics in diets of humans and fishes, Ureka Global Ventures, A Nigerian recycling firm have thus set to arrest plastics before they are taking up shores. We are working in tandem with Lagos Waste Management Agency to control to the barest minimum, the plastic wastes that are packed on our shorelines would be timely removed and converted into interlocks/paving stones, tiles and concrete roofing material. It would be a continuous process as we continue also to checkmate completely indiscriminate disposal of plastics even in terrestrial areas before they get to the seas.