Our Environment and Plastic Armageddon

[Dottie Atwater]

Moderator comment: This topic is not directly and specifically related to life in Chiriqui or Panama -- in one way, but then in another way it is related. Panama is becoming more aware of the environmental damage being done by the use of plastics and improper waste management, and is beginning to address recyclables (as posted here on CL in other topics). This topic is being allowed to remain because we are part of the problem and part of the solution.

---

 

300 BILLION pieces of plastic are found floating in the once pristine Arctic Ocean

• Report finds that hundreds of tonnes of plastic are cluttering the Arctic Ocean
• The waste is dumped in the Atlantic Ocean off Europe and the United States
• It is then swept north by ocean currents to a 'polar graveyard'
• The waste releases toxins into the ocean and is swallowed by wildlife

The link includes pictures and video.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4426104/Arctic-seas-called-dead-end-plastic-floating-U-S-Europe.html

Sadly, the recycling center in Volcan is no longer accepting plastic of any kind.

[Dottie Atwater]

The Ocean May Soon Contain More Plastic Than Fish

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2017/05/09/plastic-waste-in-ocean.aspx?utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art3&utm_campaign=20170509Z1_UCM&et_cid=DM142889&et_rid=2000258556

[Dottie Atwater]

Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

Anna Hirtenstein writes for Bloomberg about this great idea — At a garbage dump about 80 miles west of London, Adrian Griffiths is testing an invention he’s confident will save the world’s oceans from choking in plastic waste. And earn him millions.

His machine, about the size of a tennis court, churns all sorts of petroleum-based products — cling wrap, polyester clothing, carpets, electronics — back into oil. It takes less than a second and the resulting fuel, called Plaxx, can be used to make plastic again or power ship engines.

“We want to change the history of plastic in the world,” said Griffiths, the chief executive officer of Recycling Technologies in Swindon, a town in southwest England where 2.4 tons of plastic waste can get transformed in this way daily as part of a pilot project."

I wonder if the oil companies will manage to quash this great idea. Big Business has been able to kill many great ideas over the years, all that would save money and energy, and even lives.

See the rest of the story here. http://panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com/blog/news-from-panama/turning-plastic-oil-u-k-startup-sees-money-saving-oceans/

 

[Moderator_02]

Quote

Plastic Armageddon

Posted on July 31, 2017 in Panama

 

Henderson Island East Beach

Post Views: 208

By Robert Hunzinger, TMS Media Service

ONE OF the great myths of modern-day society is that people recycle in earnest… saving the environment. Au contraire! Check out the ocean. It’s filled with plastic. Fish and seabirds eat it by gobs and gobs. Furthermore, according to a World Economic Forum presentation, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics, February 2016, by 2050 there will likely be more plastic than fish in the seas, unless socio-economic policies change drastically. But, where’s the leadership?

This month  National Geographic posted news about a new discovery of massive quantities of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, entitled: Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific, stating, “Yet another floating mass of microscopic plastic has been discovered in the ocean, and it is mind-blowingly vast.”

The magazine shatters the myth that people recycle, in earnest.: “A whopping 91% of plastic isn’t recycled,” which lends tremendous credence to the prediction at the World Economic Forum that the seas will carry more plastic than fish.

Even more breathtaking : “Plastic takes more than 400 years to degrade, so most of it still exists in some form.” Following the dictum that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure,” scientists set out over two years ago to study the issue. The results  were published just last week a landmark study in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.

A turtle feeds on plastic bag

According to the study, of the 8.3 billion metric tons produced so far, 6.3 billion metric tons is now waste product, and of that, only 9% has been recycled. Yes Mr. and Mrs. Green of the World your recycling efforts are not totally for naught but seriously challenged in the worst possible fashion, people don’t really care that much, and that is a tragedy in a world filled with instant recognition of everything and anything bad or good, except for incessant care of the planet. (By y the way, the  US Environmental Protection Agency “EPA” and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “NOAA” are now subject to unprecedented slash and burn politics. A huge sharpened axe overhangs our only biosphere under the raging influence of a rebirth of primitive Neolithic thought.

The Great Acceleration, humans reshaping the ecosystem by displacing nature, is handily at work. Here’s proof: Half of the ingredients used to produce plastic have been produced over the last 13 years. That’s great acceleration, and then some. Not only that, half of all plastic becomes trash within a year. That’s acceleration of usage. By way of contrast, most of the steel produced still supports structures.

According to Jenna Jambeck, University of Georgia, an environmental engineer specializing in ocean plastic waste, the U.S. is a distant third in recycling at a measly (9%) behind Europe (30%) and China (25%).

According to National Geographic: “The problem of plastic pollution is becoming ubiquitous in the oceans, with 90 percent of sea birds consuming it and over eight million pounds of new plastic trash finding its way into the oceans every year.”

Juvenile Herring Gull,  with plastic rubbish in its beak, Newquay,  UK. 

In the 1960s plastic was found in the stomachs of fewer than 5% of seabirds. By 1980 it jumped to 80%, now 90%. What’s left? National Geographic says that seabird populations dropped 67% between 1950 and 2010..

Plastic trash is ubiquitous. Uninhabited Henderson Island in the South Pacific, a United Nations World Heritage site and one of the world’s biggest marine reserves described by UNESCO as “a gem and one of the world’s best remaining examples of coral atoll, practically untouched by human presence,” has the world’s highest density of trash, according to National Geographic.

Hendeson Island’s “pristine” beaches

Henderson’s sandy white beaches carry the signatures of Russia, the U.S., the Philippines, the EU, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, China, and Indonesia,. All of it is trash, mostly plastic via the South Pacific gyre, is a circular ocean current that moves water like a conveyor belt and collects trash along the way to the garbage dump Henderson Island at the rate of 3,500 pieces every day or 105,000 pieces monthly and increasing.

Fortunately, the South Pacific’s Henderson Island is uninhabited. People would be completely overwhelmed.

 

http://www.newsroompanama.com/news/panama/plastic-armageddon