A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#2I visited the beautiful pacific recently and even on very remote tropical islands there were plastic bottles in the water and on the beaches everywhere.
Very sad - hopefully one day the world will come to see plastic as the scourge that it is.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#3On a longer-term scale, what is the risk that having such large troves of plastic lying about brings about a bloom of plastic-consuming bacteria that emit CO2 as a waste product? Should that happen, would it contribute measurably to the scale of current carbon emissions?
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#4We're continually creating our own demise. As much as technology has been intended to extend our life, it's more often just used to extend someone's wallet, and trash everything else.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#5On a longer-term scale, what is the risk that having such large troves of plastic lying about brings about a bloom of plastic-consuming bacteria that emit CO2 as a waste product? Should that happen, would it contribute measurably to the scale of current carbon emissions?
"Such large troves" are, in this case, on the order of 1000 tons. That's like a few dozen dump trailers of wood chips or compost or other organics that might be decomposed.
When spread as a film on and mixed in the surface of the ocean, it's a big deal, but it's less than a millionth of the 30 billion tons of CO2 that we're annually pumping into the atmosphere.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#6We're continually creating our own demise. As much as technology has been intended to extend our life, it's more often just used to extend someone's wallet, and trash everything else.
As hard as it seems to acknowledge, but i think you are right.
Greed and individual(or corporate) growths always had the biggest influence on the planet.
We are indeed doomed should this trend continue.
I see no signs this trend will stop.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#7On a longer-term scale, what is the risk that having such large troves of plastic lying about brings about a bloom of plastic-consuming bacteria that emit CO2 as a waste product? Should that happen, would it contribute measurably to the scale of current carbon emissions?
"Such large troves" are, in this case, on the order of 1000 tons. That's like a few dozen dump trailers of wood chips or compost or other organics that might be decomposed. When spread as a film on and mixed in the surface of the ocean, it's a big deal, but it's less than a millionth of the 30 billion tons of CO2 that we're annually pumping into the atmosphere.
Thanks. It's good to have an understanding of the scale involved here.
That said, I'm not just talking about the plastic accumulated at this location but our waste plastic globally. That carbon might be considered "sequestered" in plastic for the time being, but that might not continue to be the case.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#8I think when people imagine these "garbage patches" they picture a floating garbage dump you could set a lawn chair on. The reality is that they are regions of slightly increased concentration of plastic. Here, the worst areas are between 100-500 grams of plastic per square kilometer. That is 5 empty water bottles in a square kilometer.
This doesn't mean that having this debris is a good thing but it's important to get some perspective as the rhetoric here is very misleading.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#9I visited the beautiful pacific recently and even on very remote tropical islands there were plastic bottles in the water and on the beaches everywhere. Very sad - hopefully one day the world will come to see plastic as the scourge that it is.
I read a whole lot of posts by a Russian world traveling photo-blogger a few years back, and one of a few consistent themes was that most remote Pacific islands kinda look like garbage dumps, if anyone lives on them. Others included: former French colonies are usually way worse off than former British colonies, and that the US (and Australia a bit, though less) has like 100x as many posted instructions and regulations as anywhere else.
Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic
#10I visited the beautiful pacific recently and even on very remote tropical islands there were plastic bottles in the water and on the beaches everywhere. Very sad - hopefully one day the world will come to see plastic as the scourge that it is.
I read a whole lot of posts by a Russian world traveling photo-blogger a few years back, and one of a few consistent themes was that most remote Pacific islands kinda look like garbage dumps, if anyone lives on them. Others included: former French colonies are usually way worse off than former British colonies, and that the US (and Australia a bit, though less) has like 100x as many posted instructions and regulation…
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