A documentary exploring the impact of plastic waste on the world’s oceans, which was partly shot in the Cayman Islands, had its official debut in London on Friday.
Plastic Shores, made by production company La Mode Verte, previewed at a Goethe Institute cinema in Brussels, Belgium in March, but officially launched at the Soho Hotel in central London on Friday, 4 May.
Filmmaker and conservationist Edward Scott-Clarke spent several months in Cayman, filming some of the Islands’ debris-strewn beaches.
He also filmed and researched in Hawaii and the United Kingdom.
The documentary follows the 5th International Marine Debris Conference, held in Hawaii in 2010, and its attendees, as they discuss the impact of waste in the marine environment.
The film highlights Hawaii’s Kamilo Point, one of the dirtiest beaches in the world, and the efforts by the Hawaii Wildlife Fund to clean up the area, as well as massive marine garbage “patches” in the North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans. It also explores the impact of marine rubbish on Britain’s beaches.
It then shifts to Cayman’s beaches, the more popular of which are pristine, but the Island’s lesser frequented beaches are repositories of large quantities of marine debris that wash up on shore.
The documentary examines how plastics – both micro and macro – affect marine life and how chemicals from the plastics enter the food chain and impact health.
It is estimated that 6 million tons of rubbish enters the world’s rivers and oceans each year.
In the coming weeks, Plastic Shores will also be screened at a number of screens in Europe – at the Mare Mostra Ocean International Film Festival in Palma Spain (11 May); at the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford, England (30 May); the Tisbury in Wiltshire, England (1 June); at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Brussels, Belgium; and United Nations Information Services in Vienna, Austria (11 June).
Related Videos
