Plastic Fjords

We assume the Norwegian Fjords are a safe haven for nature, but this is far from the truth. Plastic rubbish can be found everywhere. If this is happening in one of the world’s most remote environments, in one of the world’s richest countries, that’s a very loud wake-up call.

The Norwegian Fjords are breath-takingly beautiful, that is until you notice the plastic. It can be found everywhere: floating in the water, caught in the flora; sealife is eating it, insects are building homes out of it!

We might think that plastic pollution is an issue for built-up areas or developing countries, but even at the remotest edges of the world, we find the ugly stain of plastic.

Against a jaw-droppingly beautiful landscape, we see first-hand how plastic is entering the food chain and how it ends up in our bodies. More than 80% of the chemicals we find in plastic are chemicals unknown to us, they don’t even have a name. How can we know that these are safe? In a new discovery, researchers find that the toxins in plastic cause fat cells to accumulate extra fat.

Could this be a factor in the global obesity crisis? And can bacteria that eat plastic help us clean up what we cannot handle ourselves?