Millions of microplastics invade the coasts of the island of Rapa Nui

Hanga RoaEaster Island, the remote little piece of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is caught in an oceanic plastic vortex. According to municipal data from Rapa Nui – the local name – this island receives about fifty times more plastics and microplastics than the coasts of Chile. This is largely due to its location in the South Pacific Gyre, which carries trash from Australia, South America and also from fishing boats. "The microplastic we find on the coasts is not ours," explains Moiko Pakomio, a marine biologist with the local government, who adds that worldwide the majority of microplastics come from fishing boats that dump their waste into the ocean. "This plastic waste decomposes as it travels through the currents and degrades until it becomes microplastics," she says.

Microplastics have also contaminated local wildlife, Pakomio laments, including sea urchins, which are eaten by residents and other marine life, and are contaminating the entire food chain. "Microplastics have been growing exponentially and it's terrible," laments Pedro Edmunds, mayor of Rapa Nui. "It's affecting our lives, it's affecting our food, it's affecting the blue fish that live in our ocean and on which we depend for protein."

This has led Edmunds and other islanders to lead a campaign against plastic pollution. Edmunds had hoped that a deal would be reached at the South Korean summit last December to help reduce the use of plastic polymers, but it failed to come to fruition and participants urged each other to try to find a solution by 2025.