The Umgeni Drops Its Guts

It’s a well-known fact that rivers form a superhighway for trash, ushering an obscene amount of plastic straight into our world’s oceans. Case and point being the Umgeni river, the most polluted river system in the country, which in the aftermath of heavy rains on the weekend was mainlining synthetic throwaways and leave-behinds straight out to sea. This was until large swells regurgitated the petrochemical derivative back on to the beach as if it was a baby bird waiting for a snack!  Perhaps nature was throwing a subtle hint our government’s way following an environmentally historic vote, which saw the European Parliament banning single-use plastic products across Europe. This ban outlaws plastic bags, straws, plates, cups, drink stirrers and cotton swabs. So for those who struggle with geography… that’s an entire continent. This will no doubt help bottleneck some 80 million tons of plastic that end up in the ocean each year, that’s a rate of a dump truck every minute.  Featured Image: Sifiso Mngoma, in-house photographer for the Durban Green Corridor  Footage Supplied by the Litter Boom Project  Along the Umgeni, litter booms have been anchored across the river, acting as an aggregating device, catching all surface level plastics -predominantly HDPE and PET. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume of floating rubbish that was […]

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