Key Points
- A four-metre sculpture shaped like a poo has been plopped on Bondi Beach.
- It is filled with plastic, to highlight the amount of waste being dumped into the ocean every 30 seconds.
- The work is one of more than 100 initiatives taking place globally on World Environment Day.
A large poo-shaped plastic sculpture has been temporarily dumped on Bondi Beach in Sydney to highlight the problem of plastic pollution.
Standing four metres high, the playful piece is scaled to represent the volume of plastic dumped in the world’s oceans every 30 seconds.
The work is one of more than 100 initiatives taking place globally on World Environment Day and a reminder that plastic now dwarfs every other kind of litter found on Australian shores.
Global could be slashed by 80 per cent by 2040 if plastics were reused, recycled or replaced with alternative materials, a recent United Nations Environment Programme report found.
“The way we produce, use, and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health and destabilising the climate,” the UN program’s executive director Inger Andersen said.
The work is one of more than 100 initiatives taking place globally on World Environment Day. Source: AAP / SUPPLIED/PR IMAGE
Plastic production has increased exponentially over recent decades with 400 million tonnes of plastic waste generated every year, according to the UN.
“We are in the middle of an overwhelming toxic tidal wave as plastic pollutes our environment and negatively impacts human rights in a myriad of ways over its life cycle,” special rapporteurs and environment experts David R Boyd and Marcos Orellana said in a report released on Thursday.
The placement of the plastic poo on Bondi Beach is a project led by B-Corp Better Packaging Co, an Australian company headquartered in New Zealand.
Another report, also released on World Environment Day, suggests most agribusinesses that unlawfully clear wildlife habitats in Queensland are financed by an Australian bank, via a mortgage or other security.
The analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) found about one quarter of the properties had a security held by National Australia Bank.
The other main lenders were Rabobank, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Suncorp and Westpac.
“Banks should do due diligence before lending, set ‘no deforestation’ targets and attach relevant conditions to their loans to agribusinesses and property developers,” ACF campaigner Nathaniel Pelle said.
He said by lending without any conditions on , banks are effectively financing the destruction of habitats for threatened species such as the koala, which has had 200,000 hectares of its habitat destroyed in the past 10 years.
Potentially illegal deforestation has occurred on 4,442 properties, according to the report.
More than 364,000 hectares of native vegetation cleared in Queensland from 2018 to 2020 had a significant impact on a listed threatened species or ecological community – and was done without federal approval, making it possibly illegal, ACF suggested.
