A Spanish-made film advertisement aired in June 2018 is now serving as a jolting wake-up call, offering a frightening peek into humanity’s future if it continues its irresponsible practices concerning the indiscriminate use of plastics.
In a description from the website Adsoftheworld.com, the advertisement, entitled “Plastic Fish,” was created by Barcelona-based advertising company, Piece of Cake for the NGO, Espacio CREA, to “Explain the extreme situation of our oceans because of pollution caused by plastics.”
The 46-second long video begins with a showcase of what seem to be mouth-watering gourmet dishes being prepared and served. The viewer immediately realizes that the feast contains plastic rubbish in place of what is expected to be the fresh ingredients. The clip then transitions to a single piece of plastic floating underneath the ocean surface with a warning that, “By 2050, our oceans will contain more plastic than fish,”and an appeal to the viewer that “for a sustainable world, we all have much to do.’
Data from a World Economic Forum report in June 2018 show that the world’s oceans are “infested with plastic,” with 8 million tons of it dumped into our waters every year. Numbers also show that 90% of the plastic polluting our oceans come from only 10 rivers systems: Eight from Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger.
At the recently concluded G7 summit of world economic leaders held in La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada,“Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the European Union endorsed a G7 ocean plastics charter” calling on member countries to ”reduce the use of plastics and, where alternatives are not available, find ways to include more recycled materials in the plastics they do use.”
The United States and Japan declined to sign the agreement.
