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The problem isn't plastic. The problem is dropping garbage in the ocean and nobody to stop it. We have plastic here too but you don't see scenes like this.
By and large our plastic has been degraded to less than 5 mm, making it microplastics. But make no mistake it is still there, still carrying persistent organic pollutants and still work its way through the food chain. One of my students completed a study on over 300 samples of sand and water at what would look like plastic free beaches and every single one of them had microplastics. Nearly all of them had over a 300 hundred per gram of sample.
First world countries are doing a much better job managing waste, in the third world, they do what they please.
I take it you've never been to a poor inner city neighborhood in America, there's trash everywhere. We Americans are in no position to lecture other countries. Hell, I see couches and trash everyday off the side of the highway.
I take it you've never been to a poor inner city neighborhood in America, there's trash everywhere. We Americans are in no position to lecture other countries. Hell, I see couches and trash everyday off the side of the highway.
Those small pockets are nothing compared to countries like India and their trash. India by far has been the worse I have ever encountered, and that was just the good places tourist frequent, go out into the non-tourist places and it was like visiting a landfill with an open sewer system.
Those small pockets are nothing compared to countries like India and their trash. India by far has been the worse I have ever encountered, and that was just the good places tourist frequent, go out into the non-tourist places and it was like visiting a landfill with an open sewer system.
And as a first world country compared to other first world countries, we suck with littering, dumping, and pollution.
Don't ever travel to Japan or Norway, you would be shocked with how much cleaner those countries are. There aren't sofas and box fans on the side of the highway in those countries.
And as a first world country compared to other first world countries, we suck with littering, dumping, and pollution.
Don't ever travel to Japan or Norway, you would be shocked with how much cleaner those countries are. There aren't sofas and box fans on the side of the highway in those countries.
Have to agree with this. I was in Germany for 3 years in the Army. It was so clean, they were required to clean up in front of their businesses by something o'clock on Saturdays, and no one threw their trash wherever they pleased. The air was clean, the roadsides were clean, the sidewalks were clean.
Then I flew back to the US at the end of my duty. Flew over NYC. Even though the US is my home, I was in absolute shock at the unbelievable amount of oil in the water that I could see as we flew over, and then the incredible amounts of trash all along the roadway from NYC to Jersey for outprocessing. It's not just small, poor communities.
Those who don't think that there's garbage all over this country, tossed aside without a care, do 2 things:
Take up a job picking up litter from the side of the road. My very first job ever was a summer job when I was 15. I spent the entire summer picking up the trash off of the sides of the roads that people threw out their window as they drove down the highway. Not "poor" communities.
Get out of your bubble. There's trash all over the place. I've lived in some very nice communities and there's trash. I've lived with my sister who doesn't live in the nicest area and there was just a little bit more trash than the nicer places I've lived.
Take a trip out to the Everglades. See how much trash people have tossed out there because they can't be bothered to take their stuff to the dump. Don't want to pay the $5-$10, so they'll destroy the Everglades, instead.
The only place that I didn't see a lot of trash, in the US, was in Maine. There's still trash there, too, but nothing like I've seen in the several other states that I've not only lived in, but traveled through. I've been to a lot of states - almost all of them. I haven't seen Hawaii, but every other state on the "mainland" has trash - a lot of it. Even in the nicer neighborhoods.
As for the garbage dumping - unfortunately, cruise lines have been caught in the past doing just that. If you ever go on a cruise, have your camera ready...they still do it.
The vast dump of plastic waste swirling in the Pacific ocean is now bigger than France, Germany and Spain combined -- far larger than previously feared -- and is growing rapidly, a study published Thursday warned........
It's still weird how people are now so addicted to drinking water out of plastic bottles. Some - especially younger - can't even conceive of drinking water in any other way. But praise the bottled water industry. Our aqua-gods to the rescue.
I agree! It's a sad fact that people don't even think to turn on a tap for a drink of water any more. I see cases and cases of 24 going out the doors of grocery stores when they are on sale for 99cents.
These are the same people who never recycle their grocery bags or use reusable bags. Every time they shop, they buy more bags for 5cents each and then throw them out in the trash at home. It's pitiful.
while in the Navy, a regular routine of daily shipboard life was to carry our trash bags to the back of the ship and toss them overboard. Sometimes there would be a line 10 to 15 deep waiting their turn. Multiply that by the hundreds of ships in the fleet, 7 days a week, 365 days a year...sickening.
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