AlterNet: The Great Plastic Plague

[marmar]

The Great Plastic Plague

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted September 5, 2007.


It turns out 'paper or plastic' is a life or death question for our environment.


They're ubiquitous. They accompany us home each time we shop. They swirl about our oceans, they cling to our trees, they drift down our city sidewalks, they adorn metal fences, they're consumed by animals.

They are an urban tumbleweed, a flag of the consumer era.

Each year across the world some 500 billion plastic bags are used, and only a tiny fraction of them are recycled. Most of them will have a short lifetime with a consumer -- they'll be used for the few minutes it takes to get from the store to home and then they're thrown away.

But what does "away" really mean? Plastic shopping bags can last up to a thousand years in a landfill. In the environment, they break down into tiny, toxic particles that become part of the soil and water. Fortunately, some communities in America have started taking serious action.

Stephanie Barger has seen what washes up on the shores of Southern California. The executive director of Earth Resource Foundation, Barger has helped clean up the sands of Orange County and has helped educate people about the effects of a society that embraces disposability.

For every bag, there's a cost. Environment California reports that plastic bags, and other plastic refuse that end up in the ocean, kill up to one million sea creatures every year, such as birds, whales, seals, sea turtles, and others. And the number of marine mammals that die each year because of eating or being entanglement in plastic is estimated at 100,000 in the North Pacific Ocean alone. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/61607/

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Which is why we switched to reusable grocery bags

[kestrel91316]

2. Eventually those little bits of plastic break up so small that......

they get ingested by microbes, which get ingested by bigger critters, and those get ingested by still bigger critters......all the while not being digested but just accumulated. Sort of like PCBs.

Anyone care to speculate the ultimate outcome? Considering that WE are at the top of the food chain?

Oh, but it's all just harmless inert plastic so we have nothing to worry about. Move along, now. Nothing to see here.

[northernsoul]

5. I thought there weren't any plastic-eating microbes (yet)

I've heard some speculation that it's just a matter of time before plastic-eating microbes do evolve, but that none exist as of now.

[MelissaB]

3. I was just looking at some Klean Kanteens

http://www.reusablebags.com/store/stainless-steel-klean-kanteen-c-19_25_35.html

Anybody have on of these?

[SHRED]

4. I just bought 5 of these!

For grocery shopping and whatever:

100% organic hemp



http://www.reusablebags.com/store/organic-hemp-tote-p-24.html