ocean garbage update

Post Reply New Topic

http://trove.com/me/content/jARaJ?chid= ... aign=srfan

That's very sad. The odd items found made me laugh, though. I'd like to find a 1904 typewriter.
On a serious note, I read once that Mt. Everest is even polluted with junk that climbers leave behind.
I once went to the Grand Canyon in Arizona USA, and there was a sign: "Take only pictures, leave only footprints."
Thems words to live by.

I read a few months ago of a guy who sails from the US to Asia on a regular basis telling as how the last trip he made, since the incident in Japan, that he had traveled for endless stretches without seeing any sign of life at all, either water life or air life. He did recount about all of the "crap" he had to navigate through.

Related : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Paci ... bage_patch

Pelagic plastics

Just ran across this by sheer coincidence.

Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. They discard just about as many glass containers and aluminum cans. Those containers along with millions of plastic bags scatter into every lake, stream and river in America. They finally make their way to our oceans to create the 100 million ton ?Great Pacific Garbage Patch? that Oprah highlighted on her show 10 years ago. Did the American people scream for a 25-cent deposit-return law to save our environment and save the oceans from so much debris choking the natural world? Only six states enjoy 5-cent deposit laws on containers and Michigan leads with 10-cent deposit.
Does anyone care about our oceans being choked with trash? Nope! Not a chance.

Is there a system in the US where you can return cans/bottles in stores so that they get recycled and get a small amount of money for each bottle you return? In Norway you pay a small extra fee for each bottle or can you buy. You get the same amount back if you deliver it to a store. It doesn't fix the problem 100% but it will at least improve on the situation.

I am not familiar with any such system in the United States. There are recycling centers in many areas but not nearly enough people who care about anything, let alone the pollution of the worlds water systems, to make an effort to fix it. Even the incentive of scrap metal recycling centers which pay people small amounts of money for various types of metals attract mostly drug addicts who make a living stealing whatever pieces of metal they can find from wherever they can find it. The urban landscape of America is just as much a giant garbage receptacle as are the oceans, seas, rivers and streams. People walk out of stores opening their purchases on the way to vehicles passing trash cans along the way yet still open packages and just throwing the wrappers and packaging materials on to the ground as casually as they close their eyes to sneeze. People who smoke cigarettes will not smoke inside their own homes because they don't want the smell of their habit soaking into the walls and furnishings so they step out into their own vestibules, smoke their product and thoughtlessly toss their cigarette remains into their own front yard, or out the windows of their motorized chariots making the entire fabric of earth appear from above as a giant speckled balloon with measles. People just don't care. And it has nothing to do with age, race, status or anything else beyond simple, blind apathy.

People are just apathetic and lazy.



I think the only way to solve it is to give people more money for recycling. Not everyone would care, but some people would walk around looking for things to recycle. The problem is that none would want to pay for it. And if they introduce a small extra fee for every bottle, people would rage.