Monday, April 11, 2016

Cleaning Up Our Mess

We all need to become aware of our casual indifference toward the products we buy and use, then toss away—out of sight, out of mind. All products containing plastics are very worrisome. Only about 25% of plastics produced in the US is recycled. What happens to the rest? What happens to plastics produced elsewhere?

Plastics are forever. Watch this video to get a peek into what one organization is dealing with on just one island in Alaska. This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg...



Realize that plastics have become ubiquitous. From CBC News:
Perhaps best known are the ocean gyres — areas where large amounts of floating plastic have accumulated in easily visible "garbage patches." Of perhaps even more concern is research that has revealed less visible, but pervasive contamination by "microplastic" — tiny particles perhaps a millimetre in size or smaller. These are fragmented pieces of many different forms of plastic that have been found in beach sand in the most remote parts of the world, in sediments in the deep ocean and frozen into arctic ice. 
 Listen to "A New Silent Spring," a podcast interview with marine biologist Boris Worm on CBC's Quirks and Quarks. It may change the way you think about plastic, what happens to it, where it is, what damage it is doing.

Be aware.