Environmental Outlook: Plastic Pollution of the Oceans
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-11-01/environmental-outlook-plastic-pollution-oceans
Black-footed albatross on Kure Atoll, 2002.
Cynthia Vanderlip, AMRF
In this month’s environmental outlook: the looming perils of plastic pollution. Captain Charles Moore has been credited with discovering what’s commonly referred to as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” On a voyage in 1997, he took a detour between Hawaii and California and ran into an atmospheric phenomenon known as the doldrums. Becalmed for more than twenty days, he noticed plastic littering an immense section of the northeastern Pacific Ocean. And now, more garbage is on the way. Scientists estimate up to 20 million tons of debris from Japan's tsunami is making its way toward Hawaii.
Guests
Charles Moore
a sea captain, pollution expert, activist and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
Comments
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The contemporary art collage behind the albatross chick (hand-sized packaging) is not the prevailing condition of plastics in the oceans. More and more every beach is permeated with escaped plastic particles used in plastics manufacturing. They are dumped from lost shipping containers and float into our oceans via every drainage on the planet. All plastics pollution must be understood as an extension of fossils fuels contamination because almost all plastics come from crude oil and natural gas. (Biomass plastics are a small fraction.) For thirty years a wrestling match between the plastics lobby and those who see the desperate need for more responsible restricted use has been occurring with big money on the lobbying side. There has even been resistance to banning carcinogenic plastics when children are exposed. Most states do not even impose a redemption tax on containers. This goes to show how effective advertising and intimidation are on public opinion. Looking at Google Earth one can observe the debris fields from tsunami damage (also fossil fuel related) agglomerated in mid-Pacific, but the tiny particles are not visible. Pretty soon we will discover that these contaminants are in seafood and that we are cooking plastic to eat. Magazine food has been plastic for five decades now so we might have expected this was coming. Sixties musicians sang about "plastic people" as a metaphor, but for us it is a given. Thanks again, petroleum Oilygarchs. You do so much to us besides sponsoring the "Sunday Talks" and the nightly news.
An excellent source of information on plastics in the ocean is on the Sea Education Association web page: http://www.sea.edu/plastics/index.htm. This is an ongoing scientific research program at Sea Education and is being conducted in association with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
- Larry Clark, National Science Foundation (retired)
From the picture I can just about tell where this was taken. One of the atolls in the mid Pacific, most likely Midway Island. This is a huge problem and companies should be held fiscally accountable for their pollution.
I want to thank Captain Moore for his passion for the plastic debris issue. Because of him, my son Joel Paschal built a raft made of 15,000 plastic bottles call the Junk Raft. He and a partner sailed this raft across the Pacific Ocean (from CA to HI) to call attention to this issue. He has affected me (in landlocked Indiana) to start a blog about reducing our use of plastic, especially single-use plastic. http://tippecanoegreen.blogspot.com
Charles Moore at 11:30: "We are leaving the extraction phase of history and entering the the reuse phase." He goes on to explain how radical technological and consumption change are urgently called for to sustain sea life. Heck fire! We can't even embrace mild change when it comes to taxing the wealthy and/or providing full employment. Wage slaves and debtors don't make any meaningful decisions. Most USA citizens with doctorates don't make any meaningful decisions. Maybe the Oligarchs, who seem well-organized and cooperative will relent. Is that our only hope? Isn't it a marketeer who advises us,"You can't live without helium balloons."
icander: How did your son dispose of his 15,000 bottles in Hawaii?
Was he sponsored by Pepsico? By the plastics lobby? What exactly was attention being drawn to? It seems like any stupid publicity stunt privileged people use to get attention is positive and OK. Maybe you will call the police to report your son has floated away after breathing too much gas. What a great reality show!
Publicize the Japanese tsunami debris and connect it to everyday debris in the ocean. This is a teachable moment.
Thank you for your work Mr. Moore. Why doesn't our government make it mandatory for companies that manufacture plastic to make them biodegradable? Europe has mandatory recycling, (at least Germany did when I lived there several years ago) why does the U.S. not have mandatory recycling?!
With 7 billion people on Earth now, more than ever, we need major environmental education for all. We should all live as excellent Earth Stewards throughout our lives on our limited, fragile planet. Certainly, plastic use, recycling, and disposal should be part of this education.
You can filter a significant amount of lint from the washer water by hooking a knee hi panty hose at the end of the hose that goes into the laundry tub.
M: Teachable moment indeed. If the debris travels the sea so does nuclear radiation from Japan or any nuclear leak. (Travels the skies too.) Fish are being harvested off Washington state and western Canada that offer both your maximum daily requirement of plastic nodules and Fukishima isotopes.
The natural world has no borders, nor any limit on circulation. What goes around comes around. Charles Moore is correct that the unregulated market is the first enemy of health and natural systems. We gotta change minds fast, record speed.
Asking the USCG, US EPA, NSF, DOI and NOAA to explain their research, cleanup and plans to protect the public from the 3-11 debris (and when they would be doing these activities given that the 3-11 debris may hit landfall as early as this winter) would be a great followup to this show which was more narrowly focused on plastics.
Environmental hazards for wildlife, hazards to safe navigation in the open ocean and along our coasts, concerns about radiation being a problem with some of these materials, and how to dispose of certain types of debris such as medical waste, are all potential hazards en route to US waters and coasts.
How unseen natural disasters are addressed during the environment of government cuts is another angle worthy of investigation.
This is concerning the lint statements that were made.
The lint created in the washing machine that goes down the drain is more than 20%. However the lint that did not go down the drain is added to the lint created by the dryer. There is no creation relationship of the lint from the washer to the dryer. At one time washing machines had lint traps that filtered the water and thus did not send lent down the drain into the water system and less of a burden on the local waste water treatment systems. Once again, industry removes an environmental positive device for convenience and annoyance reasons. The washing machine filter needs to be put back. I personally miss the water filter trap as washing machine does not remove lint from the water very well and thus there is lint left on the cloths. This is a problem for us people who hang clothes up to dry.
As for the dryer issue. More lint is created by the dryer as the clothes rub against the wall of the dryer tub. This is why cloths wear out before their time. Lint is caused by the rubbing action of the cloths against any object. The more abrasive the object the more lint created.
Bring back the lint filter on washing machines and stop sending it to our water system.
Commercial Laundromats need to address all the lint they send down the drain also.
May The Blessings Be
Just listening to your show on Plastic pollution and wanted to comment on a listener's question about why we are so addicted to plastic and why glass is no longer used.
In my opinion, the raw materials that go into making plastics need to be looked at. Plastics, in general, are made using petrochemicals. With this in mind, the influence of the oil/petrochemicals lobby on decisions between plastic, which adds to their bottom line, Vs glass cannot be discounted.
Thanks Capt. Moore for your work and thanks Diane for highlighting this important topic.
Please explain your solution in detail. Cannot picture in my mind what you are suggesting being I know of no wash water recycle hose that goes back into the washing tube.
This is why good government regulations are needed on industry as they will not regulate themselves. This is something the Tea Baggers, they are not a register party, cannot or refuse to understand.
Completely agree on the regulations. When an entity's reason for existence is to maximize profits for its shareholders, it is incentivized to ignore anything that gets in the way of these profits. So, if there are no rules and umpires in this game, it becomes a free-for-all, resulting in the tragedy of the commons. The corporations understand this and have placed themselves in a position where they can use their money and power to not only circumvent existing regulations, but weaken bodies like the EPA to the extent that new regulations if and when they are passed are in their favor.
I simply cannot get my head around some of the basic beliefs of the supposed conservatives. They have been sold some ideas which they repeat and refuse to have a mature discussion about. I shudder to imagine what will happen if they gained more influence in government.
If armed robbery was not regulated by law enforcement it may have been the quickest way to increase shareholder profits. But we don’t allow that do we? Neither do we allow work to be extracted from people without paying them fair wages. Why is the way we treat the environment at large any different? If we do not manage natural resources well, essential services that we take for granted will not be around for future generations. Why is this so hard for the tea-party members to understand?
I was privileged to sail across the Pacific Ocean with Captain Moore in 2009 to write an article for the New York Times.
Out of all the amazing moments at sea, there was one that struck me the most. Moore and I were standing on the bow of the ship at night looking out at the sea. The stars were blindingly bright and all you could hear was the constant splash of waves against the boat.
Moore said if he could take everyone out to the patch he would. "Don't you worry that bringing more people out will just contribute to the pollution?"
"No," he said. "People tend to protect what they love and if they could see how beautiful it is out here I think they'd have a desire to save it."
This sentiment was re-iterated last week when I heard Jean-Michel Cousteau speak at a conference in Miami: "People protect what they love and they cannot protect what they don't yet understand."
Maybe the only upside of polluted beaches and the tsunami debris making its way toward the U.S. West Coast is that understanding plastic in the ocean will soon become inevitable.
~Lindsey
@thegarbagegirl
I sailed with Captain Moore in 2009 during the 10-year anniversary resampling. I also conducted the same protocol sampling the N. Atlantic that same year. Every sample we took, over 60, from both gyres contained plastic fragments. In response to the gentleman who called and said he didn't notice micro plastics while out at sea. You aren't alone. When we sampled the N. Atlantic with Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science, the lead scientist, Maureen Conte, took me aside after the voyage and said, “When you said you wanted to sample the N. Atlantic for plastics, I said to myself that poor girl, she isn’t going to find any. But I was the one that was wrong.” She had been doing research in the N. Atlantic for over 20 years and never noticed the plastic fragments floating by the RV Atlantic Explorer. Now she cannot help noticing and has contributed ship time for the plastic marine debris research ever since. It’s like the “magic eye.” You look hard into the ocean and at first it doesn’t register, but once it does, you will always be able to spot plastic debris of all shapes and sizes.
I can't help but admire Pancake Rankin and his passion and knowledge. However I feel that his comment about the bottle raft is misdirected. I -- like so many others-- first heard about the incredible plastic problem that we have via a raft similar (if not the exact raft) to the one that you are so quick to dismiss and condemn. I cannot judge you from my armchair and you have no room to do so either.
By nature leftists (including me) are critical of everything. We need to be critical of (and to change) the culture, economic policies and the private and corporate activities that are leading the Industrialized West, via globalization, to the destruction of our planet. What we do not need is self-righteousness.
Kudos to lcander120 and her son for contributing to the solution in the best ways they know how!
Re: lint and discarded clothing made from nonbiodegradables: All my life I've made a concentrated effort to avoid synthetic fabrics in clothing because -- hello! -- many synthetics are made of petroleum. Olefin, polypropylene. When I tell a salesperson that I'm not interested in a certain garment because it's not natural fiber, they look at me like I'm from Mars.
Another problem is that you have to search high and low to buy food, let alone other products, that are not wrapped in plastic.
Plastic Pollution is dangerous for the environment, Many animals have died from plastic bags.We should reduce it buying recycled product and save the planet from the air and water pollution .
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