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My Biggest Fear for Planet Earth

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Author Topic: My Biggest Fear for Planet Earth  (Read 701 times)
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caskur™
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« on: July 20, 2008, 12:15:41 pm »
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The other thing and very important, we have the technology to turn pastic back into oil.

If a monetary value is put on plastic like aluminum cans then that will solve a large part of the problem, I feel...

People are just going to have to reduce their plastic consumption and that is it....


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I better slot the article in here. 60 Minutes have a habit of shifting articles all over the place....

http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=156558&showcomments=true

Liam Bartlett: Plastic Sea 17/07/2008 9:45:00 AM, sean.maher Next
 
This was always going to be one of those stories that changes your view of the world. My first shock was Hawaii. On the big island, at a place called Kamilo Beach, I was stunned to see a coastline covered in all manner of plastic waste… bottles, brushes, nets, plastic bags and tonnes and tonnes of fine plastic particles that at first glance look like sand.
Kamilo is one of the dirtiest beaches in the world; no mean feat given that it’s only a three-hour drive from the Kona Coast which is internationally renowned for its beauty.

What’s so significant about Kamilo Beach is that it’s the nearest landfall to a phenomenal sea of plastic, twice the size of Britain, that swirls around the North Pacific, between Hawaii and Japan.

Walking along Kamilo Beach with Australian environmentalist Suzanne Fraser, it was hard to find a patch of sand not covered in plastic … in some places it’s a metre deep!

The great Pacific garbage patch, which casts this plastic debris onto the beach, is formed by a giant whirlpool at the confluence of four major ocean currents known as The Gyre.

If somebody throws an empty bottle into the sea off Japan or a Mexican river, chances are it will bob up in this Gyre.

Marine researcher Captain Charles Moore and Australia’s Ian Kiernan have sailed through it and they both told us it’s like a floating landfill site. More than 60 per cent of the rubbish in the Gyre is suspended in the water column.

The experts say the water is filled with six times as much plastic as plankton and, as marine life ingests the smaller particles, its survival and our well-being become entwined as the plastics enter the food chain… eventually making it to the family dinner table.

Here in Australia, we saw the devastating effects of plastics on turtle populations off the Queensland coast. Marine biologist Kathy Townsend is carrying out groundbreaking research on this plastic plague.

I was there as she performed an autopsy on a dead turtle and the amount of plastic this poor creature had in its stomach was staggering.

It literally choked to death.

I’ve seen examples in the past of plastic-related deaths to penguins and sea birds through strangulation and the like, but the scale and nature of this problem is far greater than I could ever have imagined.

Despite witnessing plenty of ‘floating garbage’ in all different forms while filming this yarn, one of the things that shocked me was the reaction of big wave surfer Laird Hamilton as we chatted on a beach in Maui.

Here’s this unbelievably gutsy surfer who rides 30-metre waves, yet he admits the only thing that really scares him is this plastic menace.

Laird reckons he sees floating plastic every time he heads out for a surf – and we’re talking about some of, supposedly, the most beautiful breaks in the world.

It’s easy to become sanctimonious after an assignment like this but, the fact is, we all enjoy living in our disposable society and consuming all the creature comforts it has to offer.

That said, I know that my attitude to how we use plastic bags, plastic packaging and plastic drink bottles has changed forever.






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