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Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

bbc.co.uk

61–70 of 166 posts

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#61

Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there. Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of envi…

Agreed. It’s also that there needs to be cultural changes in many cases, short term views are ingrained in many cultures and pointing out a fault in someone’s culture isn’t something people are open to no matter how dire the consequences are.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it seemed a trivial quantity for such a large animal.

It's a very good point and I'm glad the parent raised it. But wouldn't you find it distressing if teenagers were regularly found with a teaspoon full of plastic in their stomachs?

That would say more about the teenagers than about usage of plastic in the modern world.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#63
If you can't convince Indians not to shit on the streets, good luck explaining to them what throwing plastic bags in the river does to the planet as a whole.

With this I'm not saying that Indians will always be dirty, but a loooong time will pass until reeducation is successful, so we have to think of other, more direct (and aggressive) ways.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very good point and I'm glad the parent raised it. But wouldn't you find it distressing if teenagers were regularly found with a teaspoon full of plastic in their stomachs?

There is a laxative product that is commonly prescribed to childhood cancer patients that is just polyethylene glycol. You take about a teaspoon of plastic micropellets and stir them up in a glass of water and drink it.

The PEG used for medicine has very short chain lengths, and I would be surprised if it isn't liquid or water-soluble, and not taken in the form of actual micropellets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_glycol

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

82% of people who quote statistics get them wrong. From your article: > A recent study estimates that more than a quarter of all that waste could be pouring in from just 10 rivers, eight of them in Asia. The 93% stat relates to just rivers as a source of plastic pollution. > rivers collectively dump anywhere from 0.47 million to 2.75 million metric tons of plastic into the seas every year, depending on the data used…

You’re right about that article — however when looking at all marine plastic pollution, the countries responsible are the same: most notably China and South East Asia. https://www.wsj.com/articles/which-countries-create-the-most... https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...

Thanks for posting these. I got the original information from another article, but it was full of ads so I chose a better source to link, which is where the discrepancy comes in.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think toxicity (LD 50) is relevant for plastic consumption. This sort of stuff packs into the gut and doesn't move or decompose. So the animal has to vomit it up or get surgery because it won't move down. I think the relevant comparison is ratio of pyloric sphincter between two species (the exit of the stomach). I'd be curious to know what that ratio is and it might be surprisingly close to one almost certain…

To the same extent, the weight or mass of the plastic may not be relevant as well. The shape, density, and strength of the plastic would probably matter much more than the weight.

There could also be a selection bias, the plastic found is what was stuck, smaller parts would have gone the whole way through.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very good point and I'm glad the parent raised it. But wouldn't you find it distressing if teenagers were regularly found with a teaspoon full of plastic in their stomachs?

There is a laxative product that is commonly prescribed to childhood cancer patients that is just polyethylene glycol. You take about a teaspoon of plastic micropellets and stir them up in a glass of water and drink it.

I think we'd be a bit more disturbed if teenagers accidentally ingested the teaspoon full of plastic whilst going about their daily lives and eating their regular diet, especially if the plastic wasn't designed in a way which made it easily pass through the gut.

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#68

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - Sout…

How much of that plastic is shipped there "for recycling" by other countries? Everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate we send tons of plastic to places that we know aren't really going to recycle it.

It's shipped there because it's bought. It's bought because the buyer intends to make money off of it, not throw it in a river. Although a lot of crap does wind up in the air and water, the environmental havoc wreaked by thousands of backyard plastic smelters is incredible.

"Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam Minter https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-planet

Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polluting the planet for everyone should be the main reason for punitive international measures (sanctions, etc)

Perhaps a different way of viewing it is developing countries' polluting enables the high living standards in the developed world. Who is then responsible?

Is that a fact though? If that were the case, Mexico, the US's third-largest trading partner and by most measures, a "developing" county, should be vastly more polluted than India, which is the US's 9th-largest trading partner.

The top-ten polluted cities are in India and Pakistan. China doesn't even make the top 20.[1]

Is Pakistan materially contributing to the high living standards of developed countries? It would be a stretch to suggest that.

However, the high standards of living the developed world are absolutely contributing to rising standards of living in the developing world. If it weren't for trade, South Koreans, for example would still be living in mud-brick houses with sewage dumped in the rivers. The HangGang would resemble the Ganges. The idea that high living standards elsewhere degrade living standards in developing countries is not supported by evidence.

Pollution rates tend to decline with the rising of an economy, which would suggest that increasing world trade would ultimately result in less pollution as countries become more developed. So by not "supporting" the high standards of living in the developed world, a country themselves wouldn't be able to progress to a developed state. South Korea, achieved their economic successes starting in the late 1970s when they were definitely not a developed country. They sold heavy industrial goods and then ventured into electronics and cars which gave them the economic activity necessary to become one of the most developed countries in the world. The absolute poverty rate in the 1950s was almost 50%. As of 2001, absolute poverty in Korea was less than 2%. It could be argued that without "enabling the high living standards in the developed world," South Korea would still be dumping raw sewage into rivers.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/which-is-the-worlds-m...

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