“The unprecedented plastic waste tide plaguing our oceans and shores, can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral change on our part…”
Captions and Photo: © SAF — Coastal Care
Excerpts;
Studies have estimated that each year between 4 and 12 million tonnes of plastics end up in the sea, and that the figure is expected to double over the next ten years. But we have only begun to learn what happens with the plastics afterwards. Two students have now developed a method that can measure the microplastics that other methods overlook.
“This is the first time that the nearly invisible microplastics have been quantified so comprehensively. And we found microplastics everywhere along the almost 10,000 km long route…”
Read Full Article, Science Daily
Here’s How Much Plastic Ends Up In the World’s Oceans,The Time (02-13-2015)
Every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans, it’s equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline…
Plastic Contaminates Ocean Sourced Table Salt, Scientific American (10-30-2015)
When researchers analyzed fifteen brands of common table salt bought at supermarkets across China, they found among the grains of seasoning micro-sized particles of plastic. The highest level of plastic contamination was found in salt sourced from the ocean…
90 Percent of Seabirds Have Plastic in Their Stomachs, Newsweek (09-01-2015)
The Plastic Found In a Single Turtle’s Stomach, Independent UK (Uploaded 03-24-2011)
Death by Plastic: Is Ocean Plastic Garbage Killing Whales?, Independent UK
Plastic pollution: When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide, Coastal Care
For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years. In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by the end of 2015.
Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature… — © SAF — Coastal Care
Biodegradable Plastics Are Not the Answer to Reducing Marine Litter, UN News Center (11-23-2015)
Widespread adoption of products labelled ‘biodegradable’ will not significantly decrease the volume of plastic entering the ocean or the physical and chemical risks that plastics pose to marine environment, concluded a UN report released today…
A Sustainable Approach to Preventing Ocean Plastic Pollution, Algalita Foundation / Huffington Green (06-10-2015)
Although we know sustainable change begins with education, we’re well aware that major solutions are being achieved through attacking the problem at its source…
