Plastic in the oceans

Well said. I have banned plastic straws from my house.

Another very simple problem to vastly improve. But alas, baby steps rule the day.

Know the guy who runs the landfill in Suva. Himself and a group of people have been pushing for refunds on empty plastic containers to help combat the problem.

Coca Cola knocked it on the head.

Sailed into Manila Harbour a few years back, the water had a very pretty colored confetti appearance about it.....so many tiny pieces of plastic, broken down and floating about. Sat off shore in Hong Kong and watched locals eat their take away meals complete with plastic cutlery, foam box and plastic bag...at the end you simply tie it all together in the bag and fling it in the water, the ocean will take care of it. Spent days watching the same bundles of refuse floating in on the high tide, back past on the low.....
Huge job to educate or even get people to care.

I don't see plastic as being a big problem in Australia.
Most people know enough not to throw plastic into the oceans, and the few that don't will not be changed by removing plastic bags from super markets. They will just buy plastic bags to take their bait and stuff to the beach. Bait will still be sold in plastic bags.

About a month ago, one of the local women did a one square meter grid count on our local beach and came up with a figure of some hundreds of bits of plastic in the sand. On this basis she worked out that metropolitan beaches had some ridiculously large tonnage of plastic in the sand.
I was a bit surprised at this because I use the beaches a lot and thought they were pretty clean.

It turned out the area she chose to do the count was in a nook next to the breakwater where everything collects, seaweed, driftwood, and of course,.. plastic.
That was totally the wrong place to do any sort of spot check and in no way represented the average plastic content of metropolitan beaches, and yet the article was written up as though it did, along with all the warnings of what such high levels of plastic pollution would do to the environment.
Had the same count been taken a hundred meters up the beach the result would have been close to zero.

It must have been obvious that the sample area selected was in no way representative of the whole beach.
I came to the conclusion that it was just another example of how someone with a barrow to push will inflate and exaggerate the problem by whatever method they can think of.

I can now understand the psychology of this after wading through pages and pages of the shark thread last year.
The 'facts' don't have to be logical, accurate or representative. They just need to support the point of view of the cause being pushed.

I may be wrong but I believe the green bit of grass over from Shelley bridge where the big pipe goes also used to be rubbish dump. Car batteries and all sorts would be leaking into the river. That's only one generation ago.

When we go down to out local beach on hot days, everyone else has the same idea and it doesn't take long for the beach to start filling up with 200- 300 cars.
While this this is fu and the kids find it exciting to muck around with their mate that they find, its depressing to see the rubbish that people leave behind at the end of the day. Beer bottles, soft drink bottles, garbage bags of rubbish, and a big HELLO out there to the teenage group who thought the best place for wrapping of their new GOPRO handle was on the ground as they made their way down to the waves.... Don't worry kids, my 8 year old son had enough sense to pick up your rubbish for us to dispose of latter.

What makes me proud is that both of my kids like to pick up a handful of rubbish each trip to the beach, because as they put it "they are caving the sea lions".

Wish more would do it.

if you leave an aussie plastic supermarket bag in the sun for a week or two, it virtually disintegrates in your hands like burnt newspaper. they're designed to break down quickly

in Sth ameica a few years ago i was dissapointed to see how the recycling plant at aquas callientas(machu picchu) worked. they carefully collected the sorted recyclable rubbish from the special bins and the hotels/restaurants, took it to the recycling plant ,and when it got dark , tipped it into the urabamba river. the river is the headwater of the amazon, so basically peru,was sending it rubbish to brazil, sorted.
on the hydro electric schemes they had collecting ponds to claen the water of rubbish , the screens had a conveyor system that carried the plastcs past the inlet and dropped it straight back into the river.
i eventually realized that EVerything in the region had to get there by a small narrow guage railway so recycling was never going to be more than just a signpost. last sight in peru was flying out of lima and seeing the the bulldozers pushing rubbish off the end of a manmade peninsular out into the south pacific. the plastic trail dissappeared out over the horizon, but again who is going to pay for an alternative

^^^Gold!

Plastic bags are just processed oil.
Most people drive to the shops in their two ton 4wd, using a litre of two of diesel at least, buy a whole lot of stuff sealed up in multiple layers of plastic wrappers and containers, then put it in very thin biodegradable plastic bags to take it home.
The weight of the plastic carry bags probably equates to a few cc of oil, as opposed to the many litres used on the entire shopping operation.
Why pick on the biodegradable plastic bags?

When plastics and oil has been eliminated from the entire shopping process, and plastic bags are the only remaining item then feel free to give it a serve, but so far, plastic bags are probably one of the least wastages in the whole procedure.
They are often used multiple times until they fall to bits or are used as rubbish bags.
If you eliminate them people will just buy plastic bags to do the same jobs.

Some would say plastic is not an issue in Australia. Many of you would have seen footage of birds dead with there stomachs full of plastic. Whales are now dyeing from basically inhaling plastic.

Local Perth supply of fish are now being caught with traces of plastic in their system. Basically what was thought is that Plastic would break down was right, BUT it only breaks down into smaller pieces and is then eaten by fish. Then eaten by us and eventually we will have a plastic traces found in our systems

Its a very real problem that needs to be addressed, but its expensive so we will all just say it really isn't a problem

This Sunday is Clean up Australia day. Why not get involved and help clean up your local area. AT the same time you'll be promoting people to maybe do the right thing with their rubbish

Ive got a site running at Claytons in Mindarie if anyone is interested in helping, but it is Aus wide..

www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/

not a perfect solution by any means - but a huge step in the right direction.

this packaging material is mostly chalk, with some non toxic recyclable plastic added.

As used by Bannister Downs Dairy for their milk products.

[Bannister Downs iced coffee and choc milk is heaps better than Masters, Brownes or any of that eastern states slop.]

http://www.ecolean.com/package/material/

www.bannisterdowns.com.au/packaging

stephen