Schmidt was lead author on a recent study that identified the 10 rivers as the main polluters. From £6 absorbing patches to a blemish busting gel cleanser, here's everything you... JENNI MURRAY: Treating the elderly in care as disposable is criminal. Irrigation and evaporation mean the river doesn't even reach the sea in dry periods. Mohammed El-Said December 16, 2017 Be the first to comment. The Indus ranks second on the list. A former Cold War border strip has become a biodiversity hotspot. The plastic is laying on top of the Lake Victoria riverbed and it’s also tucked just beneath the sand. Egypt’s Population Increases by 1 Million in 8 Months: Population Council – Trending Africa says: Want to Exchange Your Waste for Food? © 2020 Deutsche Welle | It connects two of China's most populous metropolitan areas, Tianjin and Beijing, before flowing into one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, the Bohai Sea. The planet WAS warned of COVID-19. The studies involved 79 sampling sites along 57 rivers around the world. For thousands of years, the river has provided a source of irrigation to transform the dry area around it into lush agricultural land. Everyone we spoke to across the five countries we travelled and along the length of the Nile, gave us repeated warnings. Much of the plastic is discarded in the streets and on the land, sometimes stretching out and blanketing impromptu “tips” for miles. @AlexCrawfordSky, Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player. Microplastics (which is the breaking down of plastic from for example bottles, tubs and other household waste) act like hosts providing a "body" which attracts toxic substances and which those toxins can bind to. Dr Khan said the density of plastic in the fish and the large percentage of fish affected had very worrying implications on the future of all marine life in the Nile. We discovered when we went to Lake Victoria – one of Africa’s Great Lakes and considered to be the source of the Nile – much more of the plastic is hiding beneath the surface of this huge pool of water. VeryNile’s mission is to create highly efficient removing tools such as floating dams or cleaning robots. Time and again. So the problem is huge but the good news is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel — or for some breakthrough technology. Just 10 enormous rivers – including the Yangtze in China and the Nile in Africa – are responsible for depositing almost all of the plastic that flows into the sea. El-Kabbany found in his article the presence of 16 organochlorine pesticides in most of the water samples, and El Gendy concluded that residues of organochlorine insecticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were highly concentrated at Kafr El Zayat city and the Rosetta branch. or debate this issue live on our message boards. Generally thought to be the world's longest river, the Nile flows through 11 countries before entering the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt. Plastic Nile: Pulling up plastic from the river is horribly, frighteningly easy. The Nile has long been called the cradle of human civilisation. Global effort is needed to sort this urgent and huge problem. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. Well, in fact, that might be an easier decision to make than one would think. Legal notice | Bassita, a click-funding initiative famous for its social media awareness campaigns, introduced the ‘VeryNile’ initiative on Saturday, in a bid to solve Egypt’s Nile pollution by creating a sustainable ecosystem that recycles the plastic and waste collected from the river. ‘Every year the Nile dumps 80,000 tonnes of plastic into the Mediterranean, and that affects all of our futures,’ says investigative reporter Alex Crawford, who uncovers the scale of the problem in The Plastic Nile. Most of the plastic in our oceans doesn't get dumped there directly, rivers carry it to the sea.