Plastic sea pollution a real problem

[jiggy 3,207]

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/whale-washed-ashore-with-115-plastic-cups-and-two-flip-flops-in-its-stomach-886553.html

[Born Hunter 17,637]

It's tragic what we are destroying tbh. The following hit me as significant in the solution though.

Just 10 rivers carry 90% of plastic polluting the oceans

[scothunter 12,609]

It's shocking and just shows how little we really care.

After watching that programme on it I now burn all plastic cartons in my fire lol

Futile gesture but it makes me feel better my plastic waste isn't going to end up in the ocean.

Yea yea im polluting the air before its pointed out lol

[steve66 3,085]

Its a sad situation but on we knew about decades ago and chose to turn a blind eye to , the amount of plastic and dangerous metals in green waste will be crisis 

[mackem 23,780]

Interesting to see China leads the field in plastic pollutants,I remember being on total desert islands in the South China sea and the junk washed onto the powder white sand was ridiculous.

[scothunter 12,609]

Remember the whale washed up in Norway they had to PTS .

Cut it open it was full of plastic bags and other bits of plastic 

They reckon all sea birds eat plastic. 

They really ought to seriously do something about this.not sure where u would start but it's disgusting how we just abuse the environment and yes we're all to blame 

[steve66 3,085]

Been reliant on plastic for far to long without having a real plan how the deal with the waste , until recently most of it was shipped of the china and india where they made cheap plastic crap that was sold back to us 

[Greyman 25,257]

And the answer is always the same, we will have to encourage people to do more with a plastic tax, we had bio degradable plastics years back that decomposed at around the same speed as a banana skin you could put the plastic bottles in your compost bin, but they proved a couple of pence per unit more to make, the people in charge don't give a shit about anything apart from how much money they can take back off the sheeple and turn it round to being in your best interest, until nature resets the clock we will just carry on until there is nothing left

[Born Hunter 17,637]

12 minutes ago, scothunter said:

They really ought to seriously do something about this.not sure where u would start but it's disgusting how we just abuse the environment and yes we're all to blame 

Westerners need to start giving a shit for a start. By that I mean we need to make this a political and economic priority. It needs to be an election issue and it needs to be a profit margin issue. Once national governments consider it a threat to their power then it will escalate to international politics and once business considers it a threat to their profits they will look for more environmental options. Most folks don't want to take responsibility for it, too happy to blame others and expect others to fix it. I'm absolutely as guilty as anyone.

Even when people do force these changes they're often short sighted. Probably a decade o two ago the issue was deforestation in the Amazon, bit of noise slowed that down and it was forgotten about. Problem was the actual root cause wasn't addressed. This was interesting....

[jiggy 3,207]

1 hour ago, Born Hunter said:

It's tragic what we are destroying tbh. The following hit me as significant in the solution though.

Just 10 rivers carry 90% of plastic polluting the oceans

Interesting!  that it's poor countries. Ireland brought in a simple plastic bag levy for only 22cent in supermarkets and people wouldn't pay it. It drastically reduced plastic bag waste up to eighty percent. People just brought out their  trolleys and filled their car boots. How you would police that in a 3rd world country is another ball ache. If your daddy is pissing and shitting in the river 20 yards upstream and you are in swimming then it's hard to educate  severely over populated areas. I can just imagine what it's like in some of those cramped areas in India

[Born Hunter 17,637]

1 minute ago, jiggy said:

Interesting!  that it's poor countries. Ireland brought in a simple plastic bag levy for only 22cent in supermarkets and people wouldn't pay it. It drastically reduced plastic bag waste up to eighty percent. People just brought out their  trolleys and filled their car boots. How you would police that in a 3rd world country is another ball ache. If your daddy is pissing and shitting in the river 20 yards upstream and you are in swimming then it's hard to educate  severely over populated areas. I can just imagine what it's like in some of those cramped areas in India

Depressing ain't it. Got to raise their standard of living so they themselves want to have clean beaches, rivers and oceans. That takes a long time though. Short term solutions could be supporting business that prioritise the environment. Like how wildlife in Africa can be profitable and therefore is in the interest of businessmen to protect maybe there are options there in these Asian rubbish tips. Tourism for instance. No one wants to snorkel through nappies and bin bags...

[jiggy 3,207]

It seems to cause a shock when it shows up in whales because of sheer size and gets attention but what about the small fish we eat on a daily basis that are sucking up the micro fibres and poisoning themselves and us when we eat them. There has to be an alternative packaging. It would make a very wealthy man that comes up with a solution that forces governments to rethink.

[Greyman 25,257]

14 minutes ago, Born Hunter said:

Westerners need to start giving a shit for a start. By that I mean we need to make this a political and economic priority. It needs to be an election issue and it needs to be a profit margin issue. Once national governments consider it a threat to their power then it will escalate to international politics and once business considers it a threat to their profits they will look for more environmental options. Most folks don't want to take responsibility for it, too happy to blame others and expect others to fix it. I'm absolutely as guilty as anyone.

Even when people do force these changes they're often short sighted. Probably a decade o two ago the issue was deforestation in the Amazon, bit of noise slowed that down and it was forgotten about. Problem was the actual root cause wasn't addressed. This was interesting....

Born as a scientist, what do you recon to my slightly simple solution with regard to the plastic problem,A we gather up our old plastic and just melt it into solid blocks, B we stop cutting down trees because as a building product wood has a limited life span,plus it's the lungs of the world, we then simply cut the plastic blocks into lengths, of 2"X 2" or 4" X 4" or whatever size we want to use instead of wood, I have done this on a small scale in the oven and it worked well giving a block of very hard workable plastic 

It's my annual get together with the boffins at the uni tonight will find out and let you no how things are coming along with the paper

Edited November 20, 2018 by Greyman

[jiggy 3,207]

We are starting to sound like green peace on here. I'm goin off line to eat my vegan roll and degrease my dreadlocks

[scothunter 12,609]

Brown paper bags at supermarkets like before.

I'd happily pay extra for that. 

It's not like the public aren't aware of the plastic problem