According to the Swiss association OceanEye, Every year, 55 tons of plastic pollutants invisible to the human eye are dumped into Lake Geneva.an amount equivalent to the weight of seventy Swiss cows. Tires produce most of these tiny particles (30 tons), but the rest of the microplastics come from packaging, textiles and building materials.
Switzerland and France share 156 kilometers of coastline around GenevaIt is scattered in cities such as Geneva or Lausanne, where about a million people live, and dozens of small towns that use the lake as the main tourist attraction in summer and turn their shores into lake shores.
“Fauna and flora are the first to be affected by microplastics.OceanEye spokesperson Laurianne Trimoulla said in an interview: Most of the fish that eat these contaminants will then be eaten by humans.. The association could not determine whether these microplastics are also present in the drinking water consumed by families living in the region on a daily basis.
OceanEye warns: This situation is not unique to Lake Geneva and could be much worse in other parts of the world. where waste management facilities are less efficient than in Switzerland.
Organized by photographer Nicolas Lieber at OceanEye, the Nyon Geneva Museum and the Natural History Museum in Geneva, the exhibition titled “Plastic Léman” sheds light on how microplastics are found in the water they pollute around the world. from mountain lakes to the ocean via rivers.
In Lake Geneva, the concentration of plastic particles is 41.6 grams per square kilometer.A much higher amount than predicted in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean.
Increase recycling efforts
According to OceanEye, they occur all over the world every year. 400 million tons of plastic8% of world oil production. The United Nations Organization (UN) estimates that this figure could quadruple over the next three decades, meaning that the presence of microplastics in freshwater areas is increasing, rather than decreasing, every year.
In the exhibition, it is seen that the pollution is more at the lake ends.where more people reside and the Rhône river carries more waste in and out of Geneva.
Every Swiss year consumes 125 kilos of plasticthrows about 90 kilos of it. More than half comes from packaging and packaging. Only Ireland surpasses Switzerland as a producer of plastic waste, both exceeding the European Union average of more than 20 kilograms per capita.
First of all, people who should make every effort to recycle and reuse plastic as much as possible. on his behalf ocean eye It’s asking politicians to “do their job and strengthen the rules that companies use to limit the use of plastic.”
Companies are precisely the third actor in this business, and the NGO warns them to reduce the plastic they use in many of their products. The future of lakes and rivers around the world depends on their joint actions, including the waters of Switzerland’s most iconic lake, which is at risk of being clouded forever.
endangered fish
This Swiss Federal Office for the Environment thinks about it More than half of the fish species in the country are in danger of extinction, according to a study published this Wednesday. We should add it to this “red list” Nine “potentially threatened” species and nine more already extinct.
Total, only fourteen fish species are not threatened According to the Swiss office. Compared to neighboring countries, the fish situation is worse in Switzerland than in France or southern Germany.
The institution, the pollution of water in the country, lDisruption of river and lake habitats, use of hydropower and competition with other species are the most threatening factors for these animals..
However, Swiss authorities believe that the protection of underwater ecosystems in large lakes and the treatment of wastewater have “significantly” improved over the past four decades. Compared to the previous estimate made by the Swiss office on endangered fish in 2007, the trend has not improved and The number of threatened species continues to rise.