Hey all.
A few days ago, a friend of mine here on the West coast told me about this HUGE mass of floating garbage somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Ok, garbage, old news, not too shocking. But when he told me how large it was, I couldn’t believe it. I had to look it up.
The very first link that popped up gave me some really startling info. ( http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm ) If their guesstimate is correct, the floating land mass is about the size of Texas!! Ugh!!
Why am I talking about this? Well, not too long ago, Jason and I were talking about how much “Go Green” material was cropping up here in the Bay Area. Then a few days ago, the Bay Area experienced their own oil spill. Theresa and I talked about Al Gore’s Nobel Prize win. And I think Tabitha told me that the amount (and therefore smell) of garbage up in NYC was worse than she had ever seen. So there’s been a lot of “talk” amongst us, but no action, sad to say.
So now what? We’ve got this new land mass popping up and it’s getting larger. Instead of finding the lost city of Atlantis, we have built our own floating land mass, Trashlantis. Just how much more can this planet take? What can be done? Or better question, when do we start getting active and try out the options that are already available but not chosen?
I’m not pointing any fingers. You all know just how lazy I am, so I’m as guilty as every one else. I’m just not sure where or how to begin.
(Bottle caps and other plastic objects are visible inside the decomposed carcass of this Laysan albatross on Kure Atoll, which lies in a remote and virtually uninhabited region of the North Pacific. The bird probably mistook the plastics for food and ingested them while foraging for prey.)
6 responses so far ↓
Trashlantis found « Musings from a Stonehead // December 4, 2007 at 6:05 am
[...] Tag Finder today, I was amazed to find someone else outside the oceanographic community has found Trashlantis and considered the [...]
Stonehead // December 4, 2007 at 9:20 am
Charles Moore’s piece was written in 2003 and is now very out of date. So while the mechanism is correctly described, the size of the garbage patch has grown to more than twice the size of Texas, and it’s still growing.
caffeinefreak // December 4, 2007 at 1:30 pm
It’s worse than I had imagined. It’s not just about the garbage anymore. The amount of damage to every type of environmental system is staggering.
oceallaigh // December 4, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Well … According to EPA figures for municipal wastes in the USA, per-capita trash output has doubled in the last 40 years (1960-2000). The “official” i.e. legal US population has increased by about 50% in that time. Add the illegals, and we might be up to a full doubling – let’s assume that.
Therefore, to return the overall bulk of waste to 1960 levels, each of us has to produce half of what we tossed out in 1960.
OK, we can emphasize recyclables. Like glass or aluminum instead of plastic bottles. But the plastics are far cheaper to make. Abandoning the plastics will jack up the prices of consumer goods. Which will spawn a consumer revolt, forcing industries and agencies to return to “consumer convenience” products.
Y’see, the will to conserve lasts only as long as the dollars in our wallets will stretch. Which isn’t very far. And there are 3 billion people in southeast Asia who think it’s their turn ot live live Americans, and who do we think we are to say they can’t?
It will take a massive effort of international will to shrink Trashlantis. Including profound self-control in what and how much we buy – which no corporate mogul or shareholder can afford. And profound controls of human reproduction. Which earned the Chinese, when they tried it, the label of “human rights abuser”.
I don’t like the odds.
caffeinefreak // December 5, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Neither do I. Every one loses.
Qblog » Blog Archive » First Soapbox Rant of 2008 // January 22, 2008 at 12:13 am
[...] twice the size of Texas. (Pete actually wrote a good post on in it as well, by its other name, Trashlantis) Have I got solutions, hell no. Do I think one person can make a difference, definitely not. [...]
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