Oceans filling up with plastic

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Doug MacIVER said:
like I've said. Hanover, Mass zero mandatory recycle mandates. hey, if you want to, ok. if not, ok. hell everything goes to semass from here and powers nastygrid. then they recycle the rest of the stuff. the town loses the recycle profit.(if there is any)
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Hanover also has a station you have to bring the trash and recycle to, no pickup. Hard to control the goings on in a place like that. The good part, just as in Rockland (where I am), that the trash goes to semass. The trash is burned and turned into energy.
 
My Oslo heats my home said:
Hanover also has a station you have to bring the trash and recycle to, no pickup. Hard to control the goings on in a place like that. The good part, just as in Rockland (where I am), that the trash goes to semass. The trash is burned and turned into energy.
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hangover is the typical no service town, big tax, police, fire ,water, highway, end of service. 2015 all of hangover's poop goes in the ground water? don't know what the tax, h2o, sewer bill, would be if?
 
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Looks are everything. You border Norwell and are very close to Hingham.
 
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Looks are everything. You border Norwell and are very close to Hingham.
 
begreen said:
PS: Why the hell aren't soda can rings biodegradable ;?;ex
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They have all been made of a photodegradable polymer (<90 days degradation time) since the 90s.

Most animal strangulations are from discarded fishing equipment, not residential garbage.
 
True recycling will not happen under the present system. As long as there is no significant cost to just tossing everything into a landfill,nothing will improve. Plastic bags really need to be phased out. Systems put in place to keep plastic out of waterways and ultimately a move toward changing to an economy less dependent on plastic packaging. A tax on plastic would probably do the trick.It would quickly be replace with a different material or a biodegradable form of plastic. Its hard to put a price on a dying polluted ocean.
 
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woodgeek said:
They have all been made of a photodegradable polymer (<90 days degradation time) since the 90s.

Most animal strangulations are from discarded fishing equipment, not residential garbage.
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Tell that to the turtle. What if the rings don't see sunlight?
 
begreen said:
Tell that to the turtle. What if the rings don't see sunlight?
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They float and still degrade while floating. That turtle, 'Peanut', despite being a Facebook sensation in 2013, was found in 1993.

http://inhabitat.com/peanut-the-story-behind-the-poor-sea-turtle-deformed-by-a-six-pack-ring/

Volunteers that clean beaches say the marine animal strangulations are from discarded plastic fishing lines and nets. A much bigger problem than the occasional small piece of beach litter.

Should we try to fix the marine pollution problem based on what circulates on Facebook, or when DKos tells us there are 200 trillion pieces of microscopic lint fibers frozen in the Artic sea ice? Or should we try to find a solution to discarded fishing equipment?
 
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It looks like the fish and sea life that the world population depends on will at some point become inedible. The cause will be all of the above. From clothes fibres to waste plastic to a myriad of other substances that flush into the waterways such as millions of pounds of pharmaceuticals that pass through our bodies and also pass just as quickly through sewage treatment plants. This stuff affects all sea life. The occasional sea critter getting caught in a six pack ring is not the main problem IMO.
 
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woodgeek said:
They float and still degrade while floating. That turtle, 'Peanut', despite being a Facebook sensation in 2013, was found in 1993.

http://inhabitat.com/peanut-the-story-behind-the-poor-sea-turtle-deformed-by-a-six-pack-ring/

Volunteers that clean beaches say the marine animal strangulations are from discarded plastic fishing lines and nets. A much bigger problem than the occasional small piece of beach litter.

Should we try to fix the marine pollution problem based on what circulates on Facebook, or when DKos tells us there are 200 trillion pieces of microscopic lint fibers frozen in the Artic sea ice? Or should we try to find a solution to discarded fishing equipment?
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Thanks for the corrected info woodgeek. I found the CFR for six-pack rings and see it was implemented in 1994. That would make it the year after the photo. My confusion is that some articles state that only some states (16 mentioned) enforce this rule.
http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html

I agree we should go after the largest problems first including discarded fishing gear and nets. The other issue is that although it is illegal for the world's merchant fleets to dump waste into the oceans, they still do and there is no one out there to see it happening or to enforce a violation. SO is correct to point out that the huge amount of ocean plastic will come back to haunt us. Especially those populations that eat a lot of fish.
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131121/srep03263/full/srep03263.html
 
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begreen said:
Thanks for the corrected info woodgeek. I found the CFR for six-pack rings and see it was implemented in 1994. That would make it the year after the photo. My confusion is that some articles state that only some states (16 mentioned) enforce this rule.
http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html

I agree we should go after the largest problems first including discarded fishing gear and nets. The other issue is that although it is illegal for the world's merchant fleets to dump waste into the oceans, they still do and there is no one out there to see it happening or to enforce a violation. SO is correct to point out that the huge amount of ocean plastic will come back to haunt us. Especially those populations that eat a lot of fish.
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131121/srep03263/full/srep03263.html
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This plastic industry webpage says the federal law passed in 1989, and that 26 states have also passed laws. The bibliography on the thesis you sourced from WHOI ends in 1994, suggesting that was when it was written. How it missed the fed law in 89 is unknown.

(broken link removed to http://www.plasticsindustry.org/Press/content.cfm?ItemNumber=712&navItemNumber=1324)
 
You can have a good recycling program in place but there has to be a demand for the returned product. I know that glass recycles easily and it takes less energy to melt. (From a former Brockway Glass Co. employee...) and paper if sorted right can recycle well and reduce energy used to make pulp. I'm not so sure if there is enough uses for reclaimed plastic. Maybe, but I'm no expert.

A few years a go our Governor wanted to dump the whole recycling program because the recession had made it hard to sell recycled product and it was costing the state to get rid of it. Luckily the state workers who spent a lot of time and effort to implement the program convinced him to keep it since they said it wasn't easy to implement it! We still have the program and it is doing good once again.
 
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