SPAR Eastern Cape has already sold 1.2 million fewer plastic bags since it launched its phase-out campaign five months ago, compared with the same period last year.
SPAR Eastern Cape managing director Conrad Isaac told the opening of the 5th African Marine Mammal Colloquium at Bayworld on Monday night that it was difficult to stipulate when the campaign would be brought to a conclusion, but that it would not work towards the goal indefinitely.
“Our vision is for the total removal of plastic bags from all SPAR stores.
“We are going to stop them. It’s a battle but it’s a good battle,” he said.
“The future depends on us.” The campaign started at the beginning of April and the success so far reflects the reduction in demand for bags – issued by SPAR Eastern Cape’s Perseverance distribution centre – from the company’s 116 food stores and 131 Tops liquor stores in the province. Isaac, who was instrumental in launching the campaign, said SPAR Eastern Cape sold 101-million plastic bags last year – enough to cover 1,924 rugby fields edge to edge.
Though the company was not the only contributor to plastic pollution, as the biggest food retailer in the province, and considering the mounting evidence of catastrophic plastic pollution, it had to act.
“We have a responsibility and we are standing up to be counted,” Isaac said.
Professor Ann Pabst of the University of North Carolina in the US, who is president of the Society for Marine Mammology, applauded the campaign and Isaac’s speech.
“Marine plastic pollution is a serious problem,” she said.
“It affects the ecosystems upon which we all rely, from the most basic organisms through to marine mammals and human beings, so to have a major industry taking this step is very inspiring.”
Dr Mario Acquarone, a research scientist at the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute in Reykjavic in Iceland and chair of the European Cetacean Society, said marine plastic pollution could entangle fish and marine mammals or choke them if they tried to swallow it.
“The other thing is it looks inert but as it breaks down it can be ingested by marine animals such as fish which are consumed by people.
“So we humans end up eating plastic,” he said.Research into the effect of ingesting plastic has only recently begun, but it was known that free-floating micro-plastics released chemicals and attracted pollutants and there was great concern about how these elements were affecting the physiology of marine animals and humans alike.
Pabst and Acquarone were sponsored by the SA department of environmental affairs and their societies to attend the Bayworld colloquium.
They are on a mission to attract African delegates to the World Marine Mammal Science Conference in Barcelona in September 2019, which their societies are co-hosting.
The Bayworld colloquium, which runs until Thursday, has attracted a record turnout of predominantly young scientists, who are tackling the theme of “New frontiers in African marine mammalogy”.
Besides plastic pollution, speakers are addressing issues like genetic population structures, ways to track whales in the deep sea, getting information from seals and acoustic pollution from seismic surveys and shipping.