How 60,000 discarded flip-flops ended up on a remote island

In different parts of the world, environmental catastrophes happen in different ways. In Australia and California last year, it was a series of ferocious wildfires. In Venezuela and Mauritius, there were massive oil spills. In the Horn of Africa, locusts. 

And at the remote Aldabra atoll in Seychelles, disaster is unfolding in the form of abandoned fishing gear and 60,000 discarded flip-flops.

That footwear composed about a quarter of the nearly 28 tons of plastic debris collected over five weeks in 2019 by the Aldabra Clean Up Project (ACUP), a team of 12 volunteers from Seychelles and Oxford University. The project’s aim was to put a number to the atoll’s marine plastic pollution problem and to calculate the cost of cleaning it up. In a paper published in Scientific Reports in September 2020, the team estimated that they had collected about 5% of the total amount of litter that had washed up on the atoll.

Thanks to a convergence of ocean currents, some of the most remote islands on Earth – small island countries like Seychelles and Maldives in the Indian Ocean as well as islands in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Caribbean – are bearing the brunt of the world’s marine plastic pollution.

The problem is getting worse: A study published in July 2020 by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that, if current trends continue, plastic flows into the ocean are expected to nearly triple by 2040, reaching 32 million tons – the equivalent of about 35 pounds for every foot of the world’s coastlines. And in December, the marine conservation organization Oceans Asia reported that an estimated 1.56 billion face masks likely ended up in the oceans in 2020.

The good news is that immediate action could stem that flow by 80%, according to the Pew study. Many countries – with the notable exception of the United States – say they are prepared to do just that. At a virtual meeting in November, two-thirds of United Nations member states declared that they are open to a global treaty aimed at reducing plastic waste. As with all environmental initiatives, the first step requires measuring the extent of the problem, which means more local projects like the ACUP.

“Regional solutions that provide economies of scale, supported by international expertise and financing, will be the only way our natural heritage and landfills will not receive waste from other countries,” says Jeremy Raguain, communications and outreach coordinator at the Seychelles Islands Foundation and one of the authors of the Scientific Reports paper.

An uninhabited oasis for turtles … and trash

The Aldabra atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, lies more than 700 miles from Seychelles’ main island of Mahé. The nearest human settlement is 400 miles away, on the African coast. This coral atoll, one of the world’s largest, is home to the only wild population of the Aldabra giant tortoise, and is a crucial nesting site for the vulnerable green turtle. 

Despite being uninhabited and strictly protected by the Seychelles Islands Foundation, the islands of the remote Aldabra atoll are said to have more plastic trash per square foot than any other island on Earth. The debris, carried by ocean currents, has not only harmed wildlife – preventing turtles from nesting, choking birds who have ingested the plastic, entangling marine creatures – but also damaged entire ecosystems.

“We do not yet know the full impact of plastic accumulation on Aldabra,” says April Burt, a Ph.D. student at Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences and the Scientific Reports paper’s lead author. She notes that corals are more likely to become stressed when plastic is present in the water.

“This could have an even more devastating impact on coral reefs in the region, which are already affected by several other threats,” she says.

A price tag “beyond our capacity”

Most of the plastic litter on Aldabra is a result of Seychelles’ tuna-fishing industry, an important source of foreign income for the island nation. Of the more than 550 tons of litter that the team estimated remains on the atoll, 83% is discarded fishing gear, such as buoys, nets, and rope, says Ms. Burt. 

“The tuna industry is polluting with impunity the very ecosystems it needs to sustain and at huge cost to the regional communities who rely on these ecosystems,” she says. “The industry is not paying for the damage they have done.”

The ACUP team calculated that clearing Aldabra of 95% of the litter remaining on the atoll would require a staggering $4.68 million – a price that Seychelles simply can’t afford.

Another major challenge faced by such nations is the lack of specialized recycling technology. In Seychelles, only PET plastic, glass, paper, and aluminum can be commercially recycled, says Mr. Raguain.

“The variety of pollution ending up on Aldabra’s shores, as well as its state of degradation, is beyond our capacity to manage,” he says. 

“In the long term, the cost of removing plastic from protected areas like Aldabra will fall upon already-strained conservation resources and SIDS [small island developing states] taxpayers,” says Rolph Payet, former Seychelles minister for environment, currently serving as the executive secretary for the secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. “Seychelles and other SIDS should continue to strongly advocate for concrete and measurable action against the major polluters.”

As there is no cost data from any other island cleanups, the calculations from the ACUP are also meant to help Seychelles and other SIDS in planning their marine litter cleanups, which in turn would help them in requesting funding and assistance from the international community. 

While the extent of plastic pollution on Aldabra is alarming, Brendan Godley, professor of conservation science at the University of Exeter, remains hopeful. “Plastic pollution is an avoidable problem, and there is a tangible link between our actions and their consequences,” he says. “We can all be part of the solution.”