Bamboo grows very fast, so it is the perfect material for an item that needs to be replaced every three month. Unlike plastic. A plastic toothbrush is used for a couple of weeks and then stays on this planet for several hundred years, since it will not biodegrade. That makes no sense. Switch to bamboo. Plus: You can just burry the old brushes in the backyard.
I was shopping at Publixtoday (Publix is a very big supermarket chain based in Florida that can also be found in Georgia and up to North Carolina), and I noticed these in the produce section, and instantly became furious.
If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know how vehement I am about plastic pollution, so this just drove me up the wall. Why and how did we reach the point as a society for the need of vegetables individually wrapped in plastic?!Potatoes individually wrapped in plastic? I’m aghast.
Not only is this horrifying from an environmental perspective, but I also do not understand what the goal is. It’s not going to make the veggies last any longer, and it’s just going to get cut up and thrown in the trash.
This was probably my last time shopping at Publix. They should be ashamed to sell this stuff, and their “Green” department should not only get a reality check but also really educate themselves on plastic pollution and the impacts it has on the environment, the marine life, and our own health.
Yes yes yes! What a wonderful idea! A 100% biodegradable six-pack ring,plastic-free and made of barley and wheat leftover from the brewing process.
We need every beer company to support and switch to these edible six pack rings! In the meantime and if you must purchase a six-pack with plastic rings, don’t forget to cut it up before you throw it out, That way, if it accidentally ends up in the water, no animals will get entangled in the rings.
Most Unusual Corporate Sustainability Collaborations
Most Unusual Corporate Sustainability Collaborations
by @environment__co #sustainability #greenbusiness #ecoconscious #ecofriendly
The green revolution is influencing sustainable corporate collaborations. Corporations are responsible for the largest sum of atmospheric and surface-level pollution. They can help regions meet carbon neutrality goals by establishing emission reduction strategies.
Business owners may also decrease resource exploitation to meet eco-consumers’ demands. Adopting sustainability features can help…
Today is World Environment Day. Established by the United Nations in 1972 and first held a year later, this celebration and day of action encourages worldwide awareness of and action for the environment and galvanizes global citizens to do something positive for the planet.
The 2018 theme, #BeatPlasticPollution, invites us all to consider how we can make changes in our everyday lives to reduce the heavy burden of plastic pollution on our natural places, our wildlife – and our own health. Organizers also call on citizens, companies, and organizations to organize cleanups in their local communities.
Tiny turtle had 104 PIECES of plastic in its intestines when it washed up on a Florida beach and died.
The devastating discovery was reported by the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, according to a Tuesday Facebook post.
‘This turtle, which would fit in the palm of your hand, had eaten 104 pieces of plastic,’ the post says.
Garbage dumped in the ocean can last centuries, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A plastic bag can last 10 to 20 years and plastic straws as long as 200 before they degrade, reports the administration.
A six-ring plastic drink holder can linger around for 400 years and plastic water bottles 450.
The Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, a cooperative project of the City of Boca Raton, the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District, Florida Atlantic University, and Friends of Gumbo Limbo, monitors over 800 sea turtle nests each year within a five mile span of beaches.
'We rescue, rehabilitate, and release sick and injured sea turtles,’ says the group on its website. 'We release more than 9,000 stranded sea turtle hatchlings each nesting season.’
The group, during what is described as 'washback’ season reported that 'weak, tiny turtles are washing up along the coastline needing our help.’
The one turtle found with the deadly plastic pieces in its belly, wasn’t alone, according to the group.
MICROPLASTICS IN THE GASTROINTESTINAL TRACTS OF ALL BELUGA EXAMINED FROM ARCTIC WATERS
According to a recent published study in Marine Pollution Bulletin, researchers worked with community-based monitors and Inuvialuit hunters from Tuktoyaktuk (Northwest Territories, Canada) to sample seven beluga whales in 2017 and 2018.Microplasticswere detected in the gastrointestinal tracts in every individual beluga whale, with each whale having an average of nearly 97 particles, but some of them had 147 particles.
Microplastics are plastic fragments, regularly smaller than 5 mm in size, and represent an emerging global environmental concern, as they have been detected in multiple aquatic species. However, very little is known about the presence of microplastics in higher trophic species, including cetaceans.
-Examples of microplastic particles observed within beluga gastrointestinal tracts (left: polystyrene fragment; right: polyester fibre) Bar is 0.02 cm.
Researchers do not know how microplastics enter whales, but they believe is because whales feed on fish, which have already ingested plastic.
so mad that our takeaway from the mask thing hasn’t been “wait, so we could have been getting like 80% fewer colds and viruses this entire time?”
We really just accepted that “yeah, every several months we just feel like shit and do nothing but lay in bed for a week while so much snot pours out of our face holes that we have to keep 27 wads of tissue within arm’s reach” even though the solution was not only simple and easy but also offered infinite possibilities for fashionable accessorizing. I hate it here
i’m never going to stop wearing a mask in the winter time because 1) colds and flu, obviously 2) my lips don’t get chapped and bleed in the winter anymore. This is revolutionary. 3) it’s actually just common sense to wear a badass goth wolf skull mask in your day to day life??
now I can wear whatever clothes I want and people will still know I’m cool and goth
“oh no everyone not getting the flu for two years is going to make people’s immune systems weak and flu season will be worse!”
1) that’s not how the immune system works. 2) masking killed some strains of the flu because there was no one to pass it on to. we have the ability to MAKE VIRUSES EXTINCT with masks but oh noooo we have to worry about a piece of fabric on our faces. spare me.
I’m all for wearing masks to get through this pandemic but I feel, as usual, we’re all underestimating the catastrophic impact masks are having on the environment. The overwhelming majority of face masks are disposed of after one single use, discarded as unrecyclable material. According to a recent study, plastic pollution has risen 9000% because of face masks.
Filipino researchers visited the Emden Deep, also known as the Galathea Deep or Galathea Depth, the third deepest trench on the ocean’s planet, more than 10,000m below the surface and found plastic debris.
The world’s deepestplastic bag has been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, at 10,898 m. Plastics are ubiquitous even at depths under 6000 m, most of them are single-use products.
The findings comes from over 5,000 separate dives using deep-sea remote vehicles (ROVs). But not only plastic was found, also metal, rubber, fishing gear, glass and various other man-made items. The study showed association of plastic debris with deep-sea biota, which was relatively frequency, 17% of debris images were found with at least one organisms. Researchers found entanglement of plastic bags in the cold seep communities.
According to japaneses researchers who conducted the study, plastic debris, particularly single-use products, has reached the deepest parts of the ocean. Whereas regulation on the production of single-use plastic and the flow of such debris into the coast are the only effective ways to prevent further threats to deep-sea ecosystems, successful management of plastic waste is possible through internationally harmonized practices based on scientifically sound knowledge.
She, we the helpt of an expert, and volunters, removed 39,602 golf balls from intertidal and nearshore environments near Carmel, California, and combined with concurrent cleanup efforts, they report the retrieval of 50,681 balls, approximately 2.5 tons of debris.
- A harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) swimming near a dense aggregation of golf balls, and a threatened southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) handles a golf ball.
According to authors of the study, golf ball pollution is likely an underreported problem associated with coastal courses worldwide. Nearshore marine environments in close proximity to golf courses may similarly accumulate debris and should be surveyed to develop context-dependent mitigation strategies. Marine plastic pollution is a diffuse and seemingly intractable global problem, but the identification and remediation of known point sources of pollution is a tangible step in reducing the deleterious impacts of anthropogenic activity on marine systems
Photo: Several examples of dense aggregations of hundreds of golf balls encountered in the nearshore environment at the Pebble Beach study site.
Litter is present in all marine waters around the globe. It consists of several compound classes of which plastic is of special interest because of its high abundance and possible threat to marine organisms.
Distribution, composition and abundance of large litter items at the sea floor of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea was investigated based on 175 bottom trawls between 2013 and 2015. In the North Sea and in the Baltic Sea plastic represented 80% of the litter items.
Plastic pollution is found in all oceans. Now we have photographic evidence showing benthic pollution in remote areas such is Arctic.
The accumulation of plastic in the Arctic region is almost certainly not caused by local populations. Marine litter, mayority compound by plastic, it’s carried in from distant regions by currents in the Atlantic Ocean. According to Melanie Bergmann, whom took these pictures, every time finds more litter items on the Arctic seafloor: pieces of a beer bottle, string, glass, fisheries net, a plastic bag and bits of plastic.
Arctic plastic is small, fragmentend, weathered and aged, indicating that it had been traveling the seas for decades, fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces along the way. Detailed image analysis indicate the trend is still on the increase!
During a visual exploration in the north-western Mediterranea using remote operated vehicles (ROVs) a noticeable level of anthropogenic impact was observed in all studied zones,with 158 recorded artificial objects of various types detected.
Different types of anthropogenic impacts observed:
This is outside Nesoddtagen in the Oslofjord in Norway.
Over 8 million tons of plastic ends up in the ocean every year. That is 15 tons every minute, 365 days a year. Estimates calculate that over 70% of this garbage ends up on the ocean floor.
How does the ocean floor look like at your local area?
Derelict fishing gear and other marine debris smother existing animals and create an unstable habitat for those organisms that survive the initial impact. Here some examples of litter items on Condor seamount, west-southwest of Faial Island in the Azores, and interactions with local fauna.
A) close up of a Dentomuriceacf. meteor entangled within a longline
B)glass bottle next toDentomuriceacf.meteor
C)lost wooden box used by fisherman to hook their longlines
D) several Dentomuriceacf.meteor partially damaged
According to scientists consensus, there is no place in the ocean without plastic pollution.
Here are two exaples of excepcional records of acummulation of deep-sea litter in the Japan Trench. Plastic bags in the gap made by a big earthquake off Sanriku in Shinkai, at 6272 m depth (picture a) and the Suruga Bay at 2170 m (in the picture b).
These two records come from a research dive done in 1991 by JAMSTEC.
The images below shows contents of a juvenile green turtle
The ingested marine debris includes pieces of plastic bag and broken-down plastics. The shocking photo is a reminder of the environmental consequences of plastic pollution as the world’s oceans are becoming Earth’s largest wastedumps.
According to a report published by The California Academy of Science and OceanRevolution.org, as much as “80 percent of the waste that accumulates on land, shorelines, the ocean surface, or seabed is plastic.”
Well over half of the household plastic packaging the government claims is recycled is sent abroad, most of it going to countries with very low recycling rates and a serious problem with plastic waste being dumped or burned illegally.
Unbelievably, the amount the UK sends abroad is the equivalent of three and a half Olympic swimming pools every single day.
The government claims all of this exported plastic gets recycled, but the truth is we have no idea what really happens to it because no one bothers to check.
The North America plastic bottles and containers market was valued at USD 35.79 billion in 2020 and expected to reach USD 49.99 billion by 2026 and grow at a CAGR of 5.95% over the forecast period
Microplastics found to alter shape of and de-cluster human lung cells
A growing body of research has started to illuminate the widespread impacts of plastic pollution, and the downstream effects of it on the environment and human health. A new study has delved into the kind of damage microplastics can cause to human lungs, with researchers observing changes to the shape of lung cells and a slowdown in their metabolism when exposed to these tiny plastic particles.
Beijing to ban production of non-degradable plastic items
Beijing to ban non-degradable plastic bags and single-use plastic items in key industries, aiming to further reduce plastic pollution, the city’s Market Supervision Bureau announced on Wednesday, adding the ban will take effect on July 1.
“For Here or To Go,” Cliff House, San Francisco, California,
Point Reyes artists Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang collected plastic debris on Kehoe Beach near Inverness and turned it into an assembly line of meals on plates awaiting delivery to Goldsworthy’s clay tables. The piece is so realistic that some visitors to the opening mistook it for the lunch being served.
It was intentional: Fish eat the plastic and humans eat the fish, so we will end up eating the plastic one way or the other.
“We want to bring visitors’ attention to the very complex conversation around climate change,” said For-Site founder Cheryl Haines, noting that the show opened during COP26, the international climate conference in Glasgow. “We shouldn’t just leave this to government and industry to solve. There is also an individual responsibility to effect change in our own lives.”
“Lands End” Environmental art installation Curated by the For-Site Foundation
Courtesy Robert Divers Herrick and Memo (yoshimichi.blogspot)
