Sounds tasty, doesn’t it? Well, it’s as horrible as it sounds; an ocean’s surface is covered in plastic, and much more plastic is in its depths: plastic as a whole, in six-pack holders for cans, plastic bags, and lighters floating somewhere in the Pacific. Also, some plastic has sunk to the depths of the ocean, and some of it manages to degrade into small molecules, either plastic, or coming from detergents, or shampoo, or much much more that we cannot even imagine. Sounds like a horror film? Well the production was not Hollywood’s, but humanity’s as a whole!

Due to the way humanity consumes and uses plastic in its everyday life, plastic has managed to either go down the drains, or fly over many countries in the case of a plastic bag, reaching bodies of water that eventually dump everything into our oceans! After many years, the plastic has been taken by the currents and formed two huge garbage dumps in the Pacific – one between Hawaii and California, and another between Hawaii and Japan.

This was the subject of conversation of Environmental Working Group’s (EnWG) latest social meeting, taking place on February the 24^th, inviting many members to ask questions, and also add to the information already existing. But how exactly is plastic soup caused by us humans? We choose to consume plastic, even if the basic product is not. The containers and the packaging is most of the time plastic. Here are a few to name:

• Plastic bag and solid plastics: flies through the air or tumbles, and reaches any kind of body of water, eventually finding its way to our seas and oceans.
• Shampoos and detergents: going down the drain, and we all know that everything that goes down our drains reaches the ocean.

Once in the ocean, it takes centuries for it to be broken down into particles. This then creates a beautiful image of an ocean full of plastic and human waste. You know what comes next I imagine: animals and their daily swim in those vast parts of the ocean. They manage to entangle themselves in it, or eat the particles, which are also harmful, giving you yummy and tasty meat and harming your health.

We came to many outcomes, and after discussing how to prevent it as much as possible, we all came to the following conclusions of what we should do:

• Educating and raising awareness
• Consuming eco-friendly products
• Individual action, like reusing plastic bags and not littering
• Discarding traditional consumption habits, and reducing the consumption of plastic products

Is there a single soul out there that is OK with the existence of Plastic Soup? Let’s hope for the sake of this planet, and for our own health, that we manage to reduce and eliminate the Plastic Soup and its formation! Because the consequences are too many to even think about…

Special thanks to our external speaker at the meeting, Aris Telonis.

John Eikosidekas, Human Resources Responsible of the EnWG

The first social Skype meeting and online discussion of the Environmental Working Group (EnWG) in 2013 was about sustainable food production. Now you are wondering perhaps, what exactly is sustainability? We used the following definition of this term: sustainability is development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This definition is given by the Brundtland report and is generally known as the classic definition of sustainability. The question we wanted to try to answer during our meeting was: How are we going to feed the world in 2050?

This question is very important nowadays, because the world population is still growing and the most likely scenario is that we will end up with around 9,1 billion people by 2050 (according to a report from the UN). Thereby, the climate is changing and this makes the wet areas in the world wetter and the dry areas in the world drier. Of course, this is the simple explanation of the effect of climate change. Nevertheless, it leads to the loss of land suitable for agriculture and the way soil is used in parts of developing countries for example.

The conclusion of our discussion were the following points:
– Eat less meat. The transposition from the forage of animals into meat is not efficient. One could use the land to grow vegetables rather than having cows in terms of efficient energy conversion.
– The waste of food has to be decreased. This point does not need an explanation, so think twice before you throw your food away!
– Farmers have to have their own land. Especially in developing countries, because of the establishment of big agricultural companies.
– It would help a lot if governments in certain countries were not corrupt and if they would take care of their people, but that is something we cannot contribute so much to.

We also discussed the use of GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) food. We came to the conclusion that GMO food is in general something that was not supported by most of the participants of the social meeting, especially when it came to such food “improving” the taste or the flavour of a product. Opinions were very dispersed regarding this topic, so we do not really have a conclusion about the use of GMO food.

In my opinion, one of the most interesting things about the EnWG social Skype meetings about a certain topic is that you have a discussion with students of different backgrounds and nationalities. It can be very refreshing when an EnWG member with another perspective looks at topics in a different way than you do. So it is not only about discussing the topic from certain points of views, but also that sometimes you can ask yourself if your own thinking frame is still up to date or if perhaps it never was. We are looking forward to the next social Skype meeting!

Written by Iris Hordijk, AEGEE-Utrecht and Speaker of the EnWG