“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;
The amount of plastic debris in the ocean waters of the British islands in the South Atlantic — some of the most remote places on the planet — has increased hundredfold in the last 30 years, according to a new study in the journal Current Biology.
Today, the density of plastic near the South Atlantic islands is approaching the pollution levels along industrialized North Atlantic coasts, the study finds…
Read Full Article; Yale E360 (10-18-2018)
Microplastics pollute most remote and uncharted areas of the ocean; Guardian UK (02-12-2018)
No escaping ocean plastic: 37 million bits of litter on one of world’s remotest islands, Science Daily (05-15-2017)
The beaches of one of the world’s most remote islands have been found to be polluted with the highest density of plastic debris reported anywhere on the planet, a new study shows…
The Arctic is a ‘dead end’ for ocean plastic; MNN (04-24-2017)
Piling up: Drowning in a sea of plastic; CBS News (08-05-2018)
Piece by piece, an environmental threat is piling up, and we’re ALL to blame. Worse yet, even those of us trying to bring an end to the problem may not be doing as much good as we think…
An ocean of plastic: Magnitude of plastic waste going into the ocean calculated, UCSB Current
More than 8. 3 billion tons of plastics made: Most has now been discarded; Science Daily (07-19-2017)
Humans have created 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics since large-scale production of the synthetic materials began in the early 1950s, and most of it now resides in landfills or the natural environment, according to a study.
What are businesses doing to turn off the plastic tap? UNEP (06-28-2018)
Biodegradable plastic ‘false solution’ for ocean waste problem; Guardian UK (05-23-2016)
Microplastic pollution in oceans is far worse than feared, say scientists; Guardian UK (03-12-2018)
More plastic than fish in the sea by 2050, Guardian UK (01-19-2016)
One refuse truck’s-worth of plastic is dumped into the sea every minute, and the situation is getting worse, according to a new report launched at the World Economic Forum today. New plastics will consume 20% of all oil production within 35 years, up from an estimated 5% today…
Plastic Pollution: “When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide,” Coastal Care
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…
