{"id":19316,"date":"2020-02-12T09:43:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T07:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/?p=19316"},"modified":"2020-02-12T12:01:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T10:01:02","slug":"no-plastic-waste-yachtsman-anchors-in-st-helena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/12\/no-plastic-waste-yachtsman-anchors-in-st-helena\/","title":{"rendered":"No Plastic Waste yachtsman anchors in St Helena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Solo yachtsman Jon Sanders<\/em> AO OBE\u00a0<\/em>has dropped anchor in St Helena, South Atlantic, on the third planned stopover of his ‘plastic research’ circumnavigation.<\/p>\n

Jon, who is 80, is sailing the world’s remotest oceans to establish a database of micro-plastic pollution. \u00a0Every day he filters 100 litres of ocean water, recording the location of the sample, and send the filters for analysis to the Department of Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre,\u00a0Curtin University, in Western Australia, each time he puts into port. \u00a0He has twelve planned stops along the way during his voyage – though he is not expecting to despatch filter samples from St Helena as it has no scheduled courier service.<\/p>\n

The best known event in St Helena’s history was the confinement of Napoleon Bonaparte on the mid-Atlantic island in 1815. He died there in 1821. An international runway was completed there in 2017 with a view to improving economic conditions for Saints (as the locals are known) – though safety concerns linger as the runway is exposed to strong crosswinds.<\/p>\n

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This research – \u00a0and Jon’s 11th circumnavigation – is the brainchild of\u00a0#NOPLASTICWASTE<\/a>\u00a0a not-for-profit organisation whose campaign is aimed at stopping the flow of plastics into our environment. Their ambition is a world free of plastic waste …they believe that we can restore the health of our oceans within a generation, and they’re working to achieve it.<\/p>\n

Of course, they cannot do this alone – it is the responsibility of all of us. It’s cheaper for manufacturers to make new<\/em> plastic resource material for industrial use than it is for them to offer recycled<\/em> plastic. #NOPLASTICWASTE believe that by making the production of new plastic less profitable they will help businesses choose recycled<\/em> plastic for all their production needs. At the moment just 9% of plastic is recycled …so the room for improvement is huge.<\/p>\n

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Jon Sanders is a sailor of enormous experience – he was the first man to circumnavigate Antarctica solo, circling that continent twice in 1981 \u2013 1982 in his yacht Perie Banou<\/em>. He also holds the record for the longest sailing voyage (of 71,000 miles) which remains unbroken thirty years after it was set. He began his present voyage<\/a> on November 3rd 2019.<\/p>\n

Aboard his 39-foot boat he has seen a great deal of change over his decades of exploration – witnessing industrial fishing and exploration activity taking place hundreds, or thousands of miles offshore and continually encountering plastic waste despite the remoteness of the location.<\/p>\n

No accurate measure of pollution has so far been possible in the Southern Oceans due to insufficient data. Figures extrapolated from the more frequently studied North Pacific suggest there might be 21,290 metric tons of floating micro plastic in the remote regions Jon will explore. Jon’s work, however, will provide a much more accurate assessment and establish a datum from which comparisons can be made in future.<\/p>\n

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We at Victron are proud to sponsor Jon Sanders by providing him with the power he needs for his research, navigational systems, and domestic equipment. Here’s a list of the equipment Jon has chosen:<\/p>\n