41–46 of 46 posts
Before long we're going to campaign protecting the unique ecosystem that arose on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Patch is shrinking, we will say, due to ongoing cleaning/mining operations, and its endemic creatures are struggling without their home.
I wonder if, given time, an organism will evolve to make use of the plastic. Currently it's an untapped source of energy floating around the oceans and nature is really clever in finding ways to tap energy.
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Except even in those places the density of plastic is very low. > 200,000 pieces per square kilometer in the North Atlantic garbage patch. > 4 particles per cubic meter in the Great Pacific garbage patch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch It's a serious problem, but it's one that requires people to stop using so much plastic; to make s…
Microbeads in cosmetics and microfibres from clothing are a huge problem. So much this and I don't know that we really have an answer to fix this. This micro things are toxic to the entire aquatic ecosystem.
It isn't difficult to do. All that is needed is an incentive like making inclusion of plastic micro-beads illegal. Isn't California considering doing that?
If there was a way to really do it, I would not mind a x% tax on items that use plastic. Plastics make our life easier, much easier, so we can afford to pa x% more to safely recycle it. The money would be going to getting rid of it...not pork projects or paying for $400,000 pensions for civil servants.
I think we could avoid an actual tax with an effective tax. Container deposits such as bottles and cans have proven to be effective. It's worth exploring whether expanding the concept to cover materials in general would yield similar benefits. It wouldn't have to cost consumers anything more and it provides an incentive for the consumer to take on more responsibility for material and environmental stewardship.
Really it all just comes down to political will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microbeads in cosmetics and microfibres from clothing are a huge problem. So much this and I don't know that we really have an answer to fix this. This micro things are toxic to the entire aquatic ecosystem.
Part of the answer is simply to stop using non-biodegradable stuff in cosmetics. It isn't difficult to do. All that is needed is an incentive like making inclusion of plastic micro-beads illegal. Isn't California considering doing that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact, having the carbon stored in the garbage patch is better for the environment (and the organisms that depend on a stable environment) than burning it and releasing it into the atmosphere.
You don't want to burn and release, that's true, but you also don't want the plastic in the food chain. So you need some sort of way to compress and store the co2 until it can be sequestered.
As a tech product it's cool, but as a green project, I'd guess that increasing recycling programs would probably have a much larger and immediate effect.
Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills, but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there. I suspect a gullible investor money grab: "Saudi riches while saving cute animals, you'd be a fool not to try!", there will always be some people ignoring the too good to be true test. But if it does work, creating some fuel while doing the cleanup could make a world of difference in terms of…
Every day, we are putting tons of waste into the ocean. With better recycling/avoidance programs, we may reduce that by 20%, greatly reducing the amount of waste we put into the ocean each year. I don't know the details of this tech, but it could remove far less than that same 20% reduction.