A must-see video from San Francisco-based Save the Bay and Free Range Studios shows the tidal wave of plastic bags that threaten our environment, waterways and shorelines.
The group is mobilizing thousands –fighting for legislation to ban or tax all single-use bags in the Bay Area and throughout California. Haunting visuals and powerful statistics combine to inspire us all to kick the disposable bag habit.
Our Take: The best video we’ve seen yet that wakes people up to plastic bag waste. We’ve been an active supporter of Free Range Studios and their powerful, cause-related videos designed to effect change.
Explorer, environmentalist, and British celebrity David de Rothschild will set out on a 11,000-mile (17,703-kilometer) journey across the Pacific Ocean at the end of March—in a boat made of plastic bottles.
Our Take: The "Plastiki" has set sail - bringing awareness to the issue of out-of-control plastic bottle consumption and offering us a glimpse into how at least some of the 25 billion bottles trashed each year can be reused.
Bill Rosenblatt picks up dozens of plastic bottle caps and cigar tips every time he takes his dog Happy for a walk on the beach.
All told, the former mayor has collected about 5,000 to 10,000 caps and about 2,000 tips from beaches in Asbury Park, Allenhurst and here since November.
"I'm really heartbroken," said Rosenblatt, a Loch Arbour resident and member of the Jersey Shore Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an international nonprofit environmental group. "What kind of oceans are my grandchildren going to find when they're adults?...Plastic is forever."
The influential California Ocean Protection Council has proposed an attack on everyday threats to sea life, including a ban on some popular take-out food containers and fees on plastic and paper bags…
Ocean litter threatens rare sea turtles, sea birds, sea otters and hundreds of other marine species…Eighty percent of ocean litter comes from land sources, the ocean council said. Read more...
Our Take: Following in the footsteps of France, California would be the first U.S. state to propose a ban or fee on everyday sources of trash – a huge culprit in the “plastic island” of debris floating in the Pacific Ocean. We applaud California’s continuing leadership to reduce consumption, beyond bags and bottles.
The Union Tribune 11.08.08 On a recent morning, Peggy Ann Jones, an artist and photography instructor at MiraCosta College, put the finishing touches on her creation, a round, 13-foot white plastic carpet speckled with red, blue, yellow and black… The carpet is the focus of “Vortex Plastique,” an art show with an environmental message that will open Tuesday at MiraCosta College's Kruglak Gallery. The title is a reference to the swirling mass of plastic debris in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Our Take: It’s great this art exhibit draws attention to the issue of wasteful consumption – and, more importantly, the plastic “monster” floating in the Pacific (an issue we've covered extensively). Plus, profits go to the Surfrider Foundation, a fantastic organization committed to preserving our oceans and beaches that we also donate to.
Three months after a raft built of marine refuse, named Junk, left the docks at Long Beach’s Aquarium of the Pacific, the crew waved hello to a crowd gathered at Ala Wai Harbor, where the boat was welcomed at the end of its “consciousness-raising” voyage on Aug. 27. Pulling into the docks, the sailors may have appeared a little worn-out from the three-month trip, but the plastic bottles that formed the boat’s hull did not display any sign of wear or tear. That fact demonstrated exactly how durable plastic items are as waterborne debris at sea, a point the crew hopes to get across to others.
Maui native Micah Wolf teams up with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and photographer Ben Moon to create this powerful music video that empowers us to do something about the amount of plastics in our oceans.
Of 500,000 albatross chicks born each year on Midway Atoll, about 200,000 die of starvation. The awful truth—in their searches of the ocean surface, albatrosses mistake plastic trash for food and end up feeding Lego blocks, clothespins, plastic bag bits and a host of other man-made junk to their chicks. As a result, the large amount of plastic crowding the chick’s stomach leaves little room for food and liquid. The amount of plastic floating in our oceans has grown dramatically over the last fifty years. Anthony L. Andrady, a polymer chemist at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina says that plastic takes decades to break down on land, but even longer at sea because the water keeps the plastic cool and algae blocks ultraviolet rays. “Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere.”
A couple of websites recently caught our attention, each detailing the Sci-Fi-esque (but very real) floating plastic island located approximately 500 nautical miles off the California coast. "The island" is a grotesquely large patch of floating plastic trash held together by currents stretching across the northern Pacific almost as far as Japan. Discovered by Charles Moore, this "plastic island" is made up of about 7 billion pounds of plastic garbage.
Sea preserves a plastic plague - LA Times 08.03.07
The LA Times produced a fantastic five-part multimedia series on the state of our altered oceans. Part four delves into the “plastic island”, officially called a gyre. This disturbing presentation features great videos, haunting photography and lots of helpful information. Link: Sea preserves a plastic plague
Plastic patch in pacific grows to twice the size of the US - Daily Kos 02.06.08
Another great site investigating this mess is the Daily Kos. They feature an interview with Marcus Eriksen, one of the research directors at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (the same folks sailing the “Junk Raft”). Eriksen said: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States." Link: Plastic patch in pacific grows to twice the size of the US
The trash vortex - Greenpeace International 11.12.06
Greenpeace created this cool, simple visual explaining “the island”—“Plastic trash and other flotsam that is either directly thrown or washed by rivers into the North Pacific, is swept up by the currents of a gigantic swirling vortex called the North Pacific Gyre. In the centre, the calm, just northeast of Hawai’i the result is a trash carpet that scientists calculate has now reached the size of Texas.” Link: The Trash Vortex
Our Take: There is a similarity between this huge plastic island in the middle of the ocean and the enormity of plastic bag consumption. Scientists can't agree on the size of "the island" just like no one knows exactly how many plastic bags are being produced and consumed. The one thing everyone agrees on is that the scale of both is huge and deserves our attention. This "island" is the direct effect of our overconsumption. By achieving a significant reduction in use-and-toss items, we can actually make a difference.
Support California's landmark legislation to reduce plastic bag consumption—and fight industry's spin to "save the plastic bag"
The American Chemistry Council and plastic bag manufacturers have joined forces to launch a web and radio campaign to stop California’s proposed plastic bag fee, modeled after Ireland’s hugely successful Plastax initiative. Basically, the campaign distorts the facts and scares Californians into thinking the legislation will cost them more money, when the reverse is true.
We just found out about this and here's what we plan to do to support California's policy and help them be a model for cities across the U.S.:
-Post the excellent blog that alerted us to this development in our Newsroom, which gets more than 250,000 unique visitors a month, and add it to our Top Stories Newsletter, which has 8,000 subscribers.
-Inspire people from all states to tell their Senators to address the issue of plastic bag pollution! Use the form letters provided here to contact your state legislators.
The American Chemistry Council is using scare tactics and twisted facts on the issue of plastic bags because they don't have a leg to stand on. They're feigning concern about rapid deforestation, should consumers kick the plastic-bag addiction and replace it with paper bags, totally (and conveniently) ignoring the very viable solution of reusable bags.
YES, WE’LL HAVE TO FIGHT to get the real facts out there: Taxpayers DO shoulder the costs of plastic bags in countless ways. Recycling of plastic bags is a paltry 5%, at best. And paper is no better an alternative. It's time to wake up and focus on long-term solutions, not spin. Click here to learn more about the plastic bag issue.
Late last week, a fantastic slide show making its way around the internet
caught our eye. Using a potent
combination of facts and images, it
tells the story of plastic bag
over-consumption we first laid out at our web
site five years ago. Its short, visual format
provides an incredible tool to educate and
inform.
We liked the slide show so much, we hustled to:
Convert and post it as an easy-to-view
video on YouTube, opening it up to millions
worldwide.
Discover who produced it and give them
credit. It turns out to be a fellow
Chicagoan! Vishal Mody - a public school
teacher.
Share it with you, our 80,000+
newsletter subscribers, and post it in our Newsroom.
Please take just 4 minutes to watch it and help spread the word!
In a unique take on raising awareness of the dramatic rise of plastics in our oceans, Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal are in the midst of an intense sailing expedition. Their vessel? A raft made from 15,000 plastic bottles, 5,000 plastic bags and a cockpit from an old Cessna airplane. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation hopes the “Junk Raft" will get people to pay attention to the tragedy of the increasing amount of discarded plastic in our oceans; plastic like toothbrushes and cigarette lighters that are choked on by sea birds and microscopic particles that are consumed by fish.
The Ocean Conservancy recently released the results from their worldwide beach clean-up effort last September and the numbers are shocking. The majority of items found? Single use disposable plastic items such as plastic bags, Styrofoam containers, etc. 6 million pounds of garbage were removed from beaches that day—it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the total amount of trash in our oceans. “An Environmental Activist talks about where this trash came from and what can be done about it.”
Our Take: While 6 million pounds sounds like a lot, it barely makes a dent in the sum total of garbage floating out there. The effort is significant, however, because it raises awareness on the issue and gives us more insight to the primary culprits. Listen to story…
When our founder was in Hawaii last March, he heard the locals talking about the advent of “Plastic Beaches”. What he learned from them was shocking: a once pristine beach on the southern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island has deteriorated into a polluted mess. Heaps of plastic trash fragments (in places a foot deep) have accumulated here over the years due to the trade winds blowing directly on shore. As the plastic breaks down it is creating a new kind of sand – Plastic Sand. This video demonstrates the pervasive, persistent negative effects plastics are having on our earth. The growing phenomenon of Plastic Beaches and Plastic Sand are a visceral reminder of the downsides of society’s addiction to plastic stuff.
Our Take: We assume a few of you have heard about the “Texas-sized” Plastic Island” off California’s west coast, but how about the disturbing news of plastic beaches and plastic sand?! Plastic is accumulating at an alarming rate in our oceans -- wreaking havoc on wildlife, polluting our beaches and entering our food chain. Watch the video...
...in the Pacific Ocean there is an area the
approximate size of Texas that is a nearly solid mass — an island -- of
plastic bag debris. I tried to visualize this. It seemed so absurd that
I started to doubt the facts of the article. I did my own research and
found out that, sadly, this is all true. In fact there is an
organization, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, whose work has shown that this plastic island has 1,000,000
times more toxins than surrounding seawaters, and six times as much
plastic per weight of water than zooplankton. And their most recent
expedition uncovered that the acreage of this area is expanding rapidly...
The very thing that makes plastic items useful to consumers, their
durability and stability, also makes them a problem in marine
environments. Around 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced each
year of which about 10 percent ends up in the sea. About 20 percent of
this is from ships and platforms, the rest from land.
THE number of plastic bags littering Scotland's beaches - potentially
lethal to wildlife - increased by 41 per cent last year, against a
national increase of 17 per cent.
Thousands of Marine Conservation Society (MCS) volunteers on a
check-and-clean exercise last September also found 66 cigarette stubs
for every kilometre of Scottish beach, a 273 per cent increase on the
year. They were among the 330,000 items found on more than 170km of
Britain's coastline by 3,980 volunteers - on average a plastic bag,
lollipop stick, cigarette butt, cotton bud, fish box or burger carton
every half-metre.
That total was a modest 4 per cent increase on the year. But in a decade, the count has almost doubled...
A RISING tide of plastic bags is littering East Anglia's beaches and
endangering wildlife, according to a report published today.
The report, by the Marine Conservation Society, is based on surveys
carried out in September last year and suggests that more litter was
dropped on the region's beaches than in 2004.
Andrea Crump, the society's litter projects co-ordinator, said: “It
is disappointing but the situation in East Anglia and the rest of the
South-East of England is considerably better than the South-West where
much more litter is dropped.”
East Anglia is included in the regional results for the South East
which show that an average of 1,847 items of litter were found along
every kilometre of the 87 beaches surveyed.
Litter on Welsh beaches reached a record high in 2004, according to a
major seaside cleanliness survey. Wales had the highest density of
beach litter recorded in the Marine Conservation Society's Beachwatch
initiative. The society has been monitoring beaches for 14 years. It
said litter had more than doubled in UK in the past decade. It is
campaigning for new laws to control the growth in beach pollution,
particularly discarded plastic…
Bags and small plastic pieces can entangle marine animals causing
them to drown. They can also be swallowed by marine animals like whales
and turtles, causing them to starve….
The society has called on the UK Government to introduce new laws placing a tax on plastic bags…
WILDLIFE in the North Sea is increasingly falling victim to human
waste, with virtually all dead sea-birds found to have eaten litter
carried in the water, according to a new study.
Scientists measuring the amount of waste found in fulmars
discovered that 96 per cent of the birds had fragments of plastic in
their stomachs.
The figure was almost double the amount discovered in the early
1980s, the researchers said. Environmental groups - which are backing
an MSP’s bid to introduce a levy on plastic bags in shops in Scotland -
branded the figures "truly shocking".
