A poo sculpture on an Australian beach

The prank brings attention to the plastic problem in the oceans throughout the world

To draw attention to the issue of plastic waste, a sizable sculpture made of plastic in the shape of a poo has been temporarily placed on Bondi Beach in Sydney. The whimsical sculpture, which stands four meters tall, is scaled to symbolize the amount of plastic poured into the oceans worldwide every 30 seconds.

According to this article, the project, which is one of more than 100 worldwide on World Environment Day, serves as a reminder that plastic now outnumbers all other types of garbage on Australian coasts.

According to a recent UNEP research, if plastics were reused, recycled, or substituted with alternative materials, global plastic pollution could be reduced by 80% by 2040.

“The way we produce, use, and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human health, and destabilizing the climate”, the UN program’s executive director Inger Andersen said.

According to the UN, the amount of plastic produced has expanded dramatically over the past few decades, resulting in an annual waste generation of 400 million tonnes of plastic.

“We are in the middle of an overwhelming toxic tidal wave as plastic pollutes our environment and negatively impacts human rights in a myriad of ways over its life cycle”, special rapporteurs and environment experts David R. Boyd and Marcos Orellana said in a report.

B-Corp Better Packaging Co, an Australian company with its corporate headquarters in New Zealand, is in charge of the project to deploy the plastic poop on Bondi Beach.

Another study, also issued on World Environment Day, contends that Australian banks support the majority of Queensland’s agribusinesses that illegally remove wildlife habitats through mortgages or other forms of security.

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation’s (ACF) study, National Australia Bank retained security over nearly a quarter of the sites. Rabobank, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Suncorp, and Westpac were the other major lenders.

“Banks should do due diligence before lending, set ‘no deforestation’ targets, and attach relevant conditions to their loans to agribusinesses and property developers”, ACF campaigner Nathaniel Pelle said.

According to him, banks are essentially subsidizing the destruction of habitats for threatened animals like the koala, whose habitat has lost 200,000 hectares in the last ten years due to lending without any restrictions on deforestation. According to the research, deforestation may have taken place illegally on 4,442 estates.

A designated vulnerable species or ecological community was significantly impacted by the more than 364,000 hectares of native vegetation removed in Queensland between 2018 and 2020. This clearing was done without federal authorization, making it potentially unlawful, according to ACF.