So, what exactly is the UK governments Blue Belt Scheme? And how does it help protect marine environments and marine wildlife?
The Blue Belt Scheme from the UK government began in 2017 and is still ongoing today. The aim of the Blue Belt Scheme is to protect marine environments and marine wildlife, both in the UK and around the world.
The Blue Belt Scheme has been set up to protect marine environments for the long term - it's aim will be to protect these ecosystems both now, and in the future. The UK government will be protecting a variety of marine ecosystems across the world - in 2018, for example, the UK government pledge to protect and extra 41 new marine ecosystems, on top of the ecosystems they already pledged to protect when the Blue Belt Scheme first started in 2017.
With the Blue Belt Scheme, things like plastic pollution in our oceans - a serious threat to our wildlife and marine ecosystems - will be cleaned up, to make our marine ecosystem safe for the wild animals that live within places like oceans, while also ensuring that these ecosystems are safe for us. By cleaning up plastic pollution within our oceans, we can reduce and stop the harmful effects that plastic pollution has on both animals and people.
This scheme will massively help wild animals because so many animals die every year because of plastic pollution: it is estimated that a MASSIVE 100 million animals die every year because of plastic pollution - and those 100 million marine animals only include marine mammals! That doesn't include the other marine animals which are killed because of plastic pollution - such as fish and sea birds.
This scheme will also help marine environments themselves, and our marine ecosystems. It is estimated that an astounding 8 MILLION tonnes of plastic enter into our oceans every single day! This plastic is ingested by marine animals - which is why at least 100 million die every year, and, because people eat food which comes from our oceans we end up ingesting plastic too. Microplastics have been found in animals like Shellfish which people eat. And it's not limited to the food that we eat either: microplastics have also been found within the water we drink. Therefore, by cleaning up ocean and marine pollution, the UK government will not only be helping animals and the environment - they will also be helping people too!
Sources:
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/marine-animals-are-dying-because-of-our-plastic-trash/
https://www.sas.org.uk/our-work/plastic-pollution/plastic-pollution-facts-figures/
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-blue-belt-programme
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/marine-conservation-zones-michael-gove-uk-coastline-theresa-may-g7-plastic-pollution-a8388671.html
https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/markets/?348375/Plastic-ingestion-by-humans-could-equate-to-eating-a-credit-card-a-week