Plastic almost leads to a fight
Submitted by ernie on Fri, 2007/07/27 - 09:39.
While out and about, we saw a car driver throw a piece of plastic out of his brand new, shiny MPV. As we regularly see dolphins and turtles saved from plastic, and have seen various animals die by drowning as they have been caught in plastic, or die because they have eaten it, this for me was enough reason to tell the man about the consequences of his carelessness. I got out of the car and walked towards his car. Before I could say a word, the ‘gentleman’ had jumped out of his car and was aggressively holding up his fists, ready for a fight.
Plastic is one of the biggest dangers in the ocean
You often hear swearing and cursing in ports when a ship has picked up plastic in the pipe leading to the raw water cooling pump. This causes thousands of euros of damage. The swearing is only the expression of frustration for something visible. The real damage on the large scale is less visible. Plastic kills land animals, and if it finds its way to the ocean, it causes even more problems. For turtles, a piece of floating plastic looks like a jellyfish, one of its food sources. Many of the plastic bags that we see in the ocean have clearly been picked at by birds and other animals.
Dolphins are regular victims of plastic. They
can easily suffocate if they swim into plastic – they cannot remove a plastic bag from their blow holes by themselves. The week before we filmed a necropsy at the Veterinary Faculty at the University of Las Palmas, the vet and students had done a necropsy on another dolphin. Why the animal had died was initially puzzling. It looked healthy and well fed. The puzzle was solved when they reached the stomach. This was entirely filled with an enormous plastic bag that the poor animal had started to swallow. As dolphins are unable to regurgitate, once the plastic was in its mouth the dolphin could do little else but swallow.
As big as Africa
In the Pacific Ocean is an area of broken down plastic the size of Africa that runs throughout the entire water column. The currents and waves have brought the plastic there, and have broken it down into miniscule pieces. It is so small that even the krill, minute shrimplike animals and food for many predators including whales, ingest the plastic. The result is that not only does this affect their health and numbers, but puts other predators at risk of inadequate food resources. On top of this, the plastic is passed up the food chain into the bodies of the predators, and thus comes into our own food. As top predators, we are eating our own plastic and other rubbish with associated negative consequences.
It takes 150 years to break down plastic bags, and 400 years for plastic bottles. This does not mean that it is gone, only broken down into such tiny pieces that it is no longer visible. And no longer possible to remove. Apart from the problem of plastic for animals, there is another problem. The floating plastic drifts from continent to continent, and forms a part of the so-called ‘marine debris’. Various plants and animals attach themselves to the debris, while under the debris swim all sorts of other creatures. These ‘invasive species’ are transported to new destinations where they can destroy the ecosystem.
Back to the ‘gentleman’
After telling the man about the consequences of his behaviour, and ignoring his ‘animal instincts’, the whole affair fizzled out. Red in the face he stepped back into his ‘palace’ and drove away swearing. I hope that he will stop and think the next time before he throws plastic out of his window.
I too have caught myself, before I knew of the dangers of plastic, throwing a simple piece of plastic out of the window in the interests of keeping my car clean so I can hardly judge others. But what we can do is tell people about the consequences of their actions. It sounds so simple to put a rubbish bag in your car. You can throw your rubbish in it, and when it’s full it’s easy to dispose of at any petrol station. You keep both your palace and your nature clean.
Links
The problem:
http://www.marine-litter.gpa.unep.org
http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/1103/1103_feature.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre
http://www.blueoceansociety.org/plastics.htm
http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/whatis/welcome.html
Becoming part of the solution:
http://www.acfnewsource.org/environment/eco-plastic.html
http://www.science.org.au/nova/061/061key.htm
http://www.greenplastics.com
| Unfortunately plastic has become a fact of everyday life in our modern world. Still, until there is a mass produced alternative, we can try to deal with plastic as well as possible. Here are some ideas:
• Try to buy as few products as possible that are packaged in plastic |
Great article with a massage
Great article with a massage ! Really it is shameful for us that being educated as well as aware of it even then we throw the plastics into the rives that goes to the ocean and where it cause water livings to death ,for instance , dolphin is the regular victim of this .We should do not use plastic and aware our friends to not use plastic in future.Thanks....
Plastic is one of the
Plastic is one of the biggest dangers in the ocean
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The above article based on
The above article based on plastic is very good.Using plastic can be dangerous for our life .So we should not use plastic and spread awareness of this dangerous thing among the people.Because plastic is not only harmful for people but animal also.So i appreciate your effort to make people aware of this plastic.Thanks
ok so it is plastic what has
ok so it is plastic what has the worst effect on the ocean, loved this post, save the turtles man!
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Hi
Due to their insolubility in water and relative chemical inertness, pure plastics generally have low toxicity in their finished state, and will pass through the digestive system with no ill effect (other than mechanical damage or obstruction).
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nice post
Plastic as toxic trash is barely an issue with health advocates, environmentalists, and even those of us looking toward the post-petroleum world. Instead, "recycling" and future "bioplastics" distract people from keeping plastic out of their lives
Plastic is one of the biggest dangers in the ocean
Plastic does not biodegrade, but when exposed to sunlight it photo-degrades, breaking down into smaller and smaller particles. But these particles are certainly killing marine life the UN estimates that more than one million birds and 100000 mammals die every year from plastics by poisoning, entanglement and choking.
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Hi...
Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and reprocessing the material into useful products, sometimes completely different in form from their original state. For instance, this could mean melting down soft drink bottles then casting them as plastic chairs and tables. Typically a plastic is not recycled into the same type of plastic and products made from recycled plastics are often not recyclable.
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Nice post
Hey,
You choose a very great topic for writing a article.I hope every body read this article and By this article they can aware from plastic pollution.I would like to thanks to the author for this great effort.
Hello
Marine debris is mainly discarded human rubbish which floats on, or is suspended in the ocean. Eighty percent of marine debris is plastic - a component that has been rapidly accumulating since the end of World War II.The mass of plastic in the oceans may be as high as one hundred million metric tons.
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Dont throw Plastic anywhere
Plastic is one of the biggest dangers in the ocean. Its sad to know this Dolphins are regular victims of plastic.The suggestion which you've mentioned here is really good .
Re:Plastic almost leads to a fight
As i know It takes four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag, a process which the Post says creates 70 percent more air and 50 times more water pollution than plastic production
Plastic Kills
Plastic waste in the oceans kills around 100000 whales, dolphins, seals, turtles and other large animals each year. An estimated one million seabirds also die from strangulation, choking or starvation after eating seaborne plastic.
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