Archives
Can These Inventions Save Oceans From Our Plastic Habit?
Read the full article online at http://www.takepart.com “NEWPORT BEACH, California—As a lifelong surfer, Louis Pazos has had an up-close look at the world’s plastics problem. Just about every time he has paddled out at any of his favorite breaks in Southern California, he has ended up swimming among trash bags and other rubbish. But the floating […]
22 Million Pounds of Plastic Enters the Great Lakes Each Year
Read the full article online at http://www.ecowatch.com “U.S. and Canada together discard 22 million pounds of plastic into the waters of the Great Lakes each year, according to a new Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) study. Most of it washes up along the shores, accounting for 80 percent of the litter found there. Researchers said that […]
Extent of America’s Landfill Problem
America, land of the … landfills? That’s what we’ve turned into since 1937, when the first sanitary landfill opened in Fresno, California. Today, there are nearly 2,000 active landfills across the country and hundreds more are at capacity, a stark reminder of just how massive our waste problem has become. This visualization from SaveOnEnergy shows how quickly landfills have boomed across the country, particularly in the past 30 years. One thing we have to remember when looking at this is that trash, and landfills, are a human invention. Waste does not exist in nature, in any form. Everything that is produced in a healthy ecosystem is consumed or decomposed by another organism, or the sun. That is because, in a natural system, everything has value to something.
Plastic Chair Made From Our Air Pollution
Plastic surrounds us. From grocery bags and water bottles to gas caps and furniture, the petroleum-based products are ubiquitous, but the planet-warming emissions from their creation doesn’t have to be. Our chairs, bottle caps, and even laptop computer cases could all be part of the carbon emissions solution, capturing greenhouse gases within the plastic they’re made out of.
You Can Fish For Plastic
“PLASTIC FISHING is the best way to enjoy the canals of Amsterdam! Step on board on one of our design boats made of Amsterdam Canal Plastic for a truly unique experience. Let us show you the highlights of Amsterdam whilst you can make a very positive contribution to our beautiful canals and the oceans in general.”
Trash Is For Tossers
“Lauren Singer runs Trash Is for Tossers, a no-waste lifestyle blog that is brimming with smart, simple and sleek-looking tips, tricks and DIY projects for adopting a more sustainable life.
‘I would like people to take away that we can all, regardless of our background, our beliefs, where we live or our socioeconomic status, take simple steps to reduce our environmental impact. It is simple to say no to a plastic straw or carry a reusable bag,’ Singer told The Huffington Post.”
Bacterium That Eats Our Plastic Waste
“Hundreds of millions of tons of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic are produced each year to package everything from sodas to shampoo. That only a fraction of this is recycled leaves much of it to rest in landfills and the ocean. But efforts to deal with this monumental mess may soon receive a much-needed boost, with scientists in Japan discovering a new bacterium with the ability to completely break down PET plastics in a relatively short space of time.”
Oceans will soon contain more plastic than fish
“‘The best research currently available estimates that there are over 150 million tonnes (165 million tons) of plastics in the ocean today,’ [a] report reads. ‘In a business-as-usual scenario, the ocean is expected to contain 1 tonne (1.1 tons) of plastic for every 3 tonnes of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight).’
In other words, in just 34 years, plastic trash in the ocean will outweigh all the fish in the sea.”
There is More Plastic in Our Oceans Than We Thought
The 5 Gyres Institute co-authored this study which is the most comprehensive estimate of small plastics in the world’s oceans. There were two other papers published earlier, one by Cozar (2014) and Eriksen (2014) using separate data sets.
The paper published last week in Environmental Research Letters, A Global Inventory of Small Floating Plastic Debris, uses three ocean models and every dataset published since the 1970s. With 10 authors contributing to it, it’s the best so far. This new study suggests there are 15 to 51 trillion microplastic particles in the world’s oceans, weighing somewhere between 93 and 236,000 metric tons. This is roughly seven times more than what we thought before.
The First Completely Recyclable Biopolymer
Each year, around 10-20 million tons of plastic finds its way in to the Earth’s oceans, in total an estimated 5.25 trillion plastic fragments, weighing 268,940 tons. This plastic remains results in an estimated loss of $13 billion each year from damage that is done to the oceans ecosystem.
