What do you know about hazardous waste?: Plastic Plastic Plastic!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Plastic Plastic Plastic!

Have you ever heard of "The Garbage Patch" or the "Great Pacific Trash Island"?

Well, here are some videos I would recommend to learn about it:

(you can find more on youtube.com)

Important quotes: "3.9 million tons of floating trash."

"Estimated to be twice the size of Texas."

"Stretches from the coast of California all the way to Japan."

"In some places the man-made debris is 90 feet deep."

"90% ... is all plastic."

"80% is litter."

The Garbage Patch is located in the center of some revolving currents called the North Pacific Gyre. In the middle of this Gyre is kind of a "meteorological phenomenon" as it consists of high pressure north of the Hawaiian Islands and the currents are weak so the ocean surface is as undisturbed as lake water.

http://www.examiner.com/going-green-in-san-francisco/map-of-north-pacific-gyre-photo

http://gcaptain.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/?2007

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=coastalcleanupday2011#page=2

In California, they have a "Coastal Cleanup Day," which is an annual beach and waterway cleanup. Support is volunteer-based and in 2010, over "82,500 volunteers removed more than 1.2 million pounds of trash and recyclables."

For more information on what things you can recycle such as corks, floppy disks, videos, computers, glasses, CDs, packing peanuts, smoke detectors, cameras, etc. click Recycling More Obscure Materials and Commonly Recycled Materials.

http://www.good.is/post/transparency-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/

Important Quotes: "We use two million plastic bottles every 5 minutes (in the US)." For information on what household wastes to recycle click: Resources for Recycling Household Hazardous Waste.

"Four month old Albatross died with this in it's stomach (photo below)."

"Stomachs are full of bottle caps and other rubbish like cigarette lighters."

There is also a "HUGE GARBAGE PATCH" in the Atlantic Ocean.

This area in the Atlantic has been ignored by many and is situated a few hundred miles east of us here in the U.S. According to National Geographic, it is "roughly the distance from Cuba to Virginia".

When I was in Taiwan, we went to the Northern coast and had fun on the beach. When we went further away from the swimming area to catch some crabs, I could see a HUGE amount of trash. I didn't want to take many photos because I wanted everyone who saw my pictures to see how beautiful Taiwan was, but I was able to dig through my pictures and find one that I took on my way to where the crabs were.

This was only on the way, but the further we got away from the tourist attraction, the more and more trash we found on the shore. It was awful! On the way back I was hoping to find a plastic bag to carry stuff back with no luck. My Taiwanese friends and I carried a few things back, but I would have loved spending the rest of my afternoon cleaning it up. From all of these examples of coastlines swamped with trash and plastic, I think it is safe to assume many other coastlines all around the globe have this severe problem and we need to get off of our butts and do something about it. We also need to think positively and know that even though we may never remove everything from our oceans, we can still make an impact by reducing our waste and cleaning up via vacuuming, etc.

For information about innovative ways to reduce plastic in our oceans found at Plans to Reduce Waste.

More Videos of the patch in the Pacific Ocean.