41–50 of 83 posts
Meh, who cares. The Arctic is useless to us anyway. Also, it seems there is no "patch of plastic garbage". It's just microscopic debris over thousands of kilometers. Do people really think 7 billion humans will not have any impact on the planet? They will. Things will change. As long as it serves our purpose, we must utilize this planet to the maximum.
Capitalism is the problem.
1) Profit incentives that don't align with long-term environmental improvement, in part due to ineffective regulations.
2) Incomplete corporate accounting that doesn't factor in environmental costs such as pollution.
3) Apathy and/or lack of awareness of environmental consequences by consumers - a state which is encouraged by advertising and corporate mechanisms such as planned obsolescence.
Meh, who cares. The Arctic is useless to us anyway. Also, it seems there is no "patch of plastic garbage". It's just microscopic debris over thousands of kilometers. Do people really think 7 billion humans will not have any impact on the planet? They will. Things will change. As long as it serves our purpose, we must utilize this planet to the maximum.
I 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 g…
Personally I'm more concerned about these plastics getting into my food than I am about whether they'll support my chair. We're going to have serious ecological issues long before these garbage patches become visible - or floatable.
[1] http://www.bottledwater.org/news/weight-pet-bottled-water-co...
I 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 g…
Your 'standard' bottled water bottle is more like 15 grams[1], so to use that metric we're talking 6 to 35 bottles per square kilometre. Personally I'm more concerned about these plastics getting into my food than I am about whether they'll support my chair. We're going to have serious ecological issues long before these garbage patches become visible - or floatable. [1] http://www.bottledwater.org/news/weight-pet-bo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These numbers refer to microscopic and otherwise extremely small particle size. You're still in "a couple of kg per square km" territory in the denser regions for these other (more famous) patches. Again, this is not a good thing and has important negative ecological effects. This needs to be studied and mitigated. But we're still not walking on top of floating islands of garbage.
Sure, I'm not trying to say they're big particles. Most humans would have a hard time to know if they're in the garbage patches or not. The term garbage patch is probably misleading. Soup is better, but still makes people think you'd be able to see it.
One sample drawn near the border of Lake Erie's central and eastern basins
yielded 600,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer I 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 g…
I 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 g…
Why is trash ending up in the Arctic, that's my takeaway. Half a kilo of plastic per square kilometer is a lot for water that shouldn't have any plastic in the first place. I guess it is all about perspective.
I 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 g…
I mean, even when put in the terms of 5 empty waterbottles per square kilometer is still an astounding amount of pollution.