More to be bummed about!
Every year, we junk some 4 to 5 TRILLION plastic bags worldwide, according to the Worldwatch Institute. Around the globe, plastic bags, used for a matter of minutes and then thrown away, leave stores and markets in quantities hundreds of times greater than any other piece of merchandise. They are the world's most ubiquitous consumer item and, not coincidentally, its most pervasive throwaway product.
We recycle plastic bags at a rate of less than 1 percent, and thrown-away bags formed some 4 million tons of municiple waste in the United States in 2006. They poison out air when burned in incinerators, or leach nasty chemicals in our landfills for hundreds of years. And thanks to their lightweight aerodynamics, the wind carries an estimated 1 percent of plastic bags out of trash depositories. These renegade bags end up billowing from trees, hanging from fences, or, worst of all, floating in the ocean.
In 1988, across a span of just two weeks, fifteen leatherback turtles, an endangered species, washed up dead on the beaches of Long Island. Alarmed by their deaths, marine biologists performed autopsies. They discovered that eleven of the fifteen dead turtles had ingested plastic bags that blocked their stomach openings. Leathback turtles, you see, have the unfortunate twin qualities of a taste for jellyfish and bad eye-site. To these nearly blind turtles, it seems, a submerged plastic bag looks simply delicious.
The crazy thing is that the bags, which are designed to be thrown away, are made out of a material that is designed to last forever. They are far from the only- plastic-containing disposables: think of razors, eating utensils, toothbrushes, water bottles, coffee cups, pens, combs, and on and on. Because plastic is so durable, all these things persist for hundreds of years. As a result, there are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
A thousand miles off the coast of California, in the middles of the Pacific ocean, there is a swirling soup of floating trash twice the size of the continental United States. The "garbage patch", as it's called, contains six times as much plasti, by weight, as bio-matter. Way out there in the Pacific Ocean, a thousan miles from the nearest human, plankton, jellyfish, and fish are outnumbered (by weight) six to one by plastic bags, water bottles, and other throwaway plastic tchotchkes.
In the North Pacific alone, an estimated 100,000 sea turtles and sea mammals, a million seabirds, and countless fish starve to death each year after plastic blocks their digestive tracks. A recent study on Sand Island, in the northwest Hawaiian chain, showed that 97 percent of Layson albatross chicks had ingested plastc picked up by their parents from the ocean surface and mistakenly fed to them as food.
Meanwhile, those floating plastic discards that don't choke marine animals slowly break down in the salt and sunlight until they are suspended in the water like microscopic Christmas-tree bobbles. The plankton-eaters devour them, then the big fish eat the little fish, and then guess who eats the big fish? The sushi restaurants that make dinners for us grown-ups and the fish-stick factories that make school lunches for our kids. What starts at the bottom of the food chain inevitably ends up at the top.
It turns out that each of us has, in our body, detectable amounts of up to one hundred industrial chemicals nobody had ever even heard of fifty years ago. Many of these chemicals come from the production and use of the same disposible plastic crap that fills my garbage bags. Bisphenol-A, for example, a compound used in the liners of food cans and to make disposable water bottles and other hard plastics, is a known hormone disrupter that raises the risk of certain cancers, hampers fertility, and may contribute to childhood behavioral problems such as hyperactivity.
You are what you eat, they say, and it's not just the turtles who are ingesting the palstic crap we throw away. What happens to the wildlife on this planet is an early warning sign of what's happening to us.
-From Colin Beavan's "No Impact Man"
We recycle plastic bags at a rate of less than 1 percent, and thrown-away bags formed some 4 million tons of municiple waste in the United States in 2006. They poison out air when burned in incinerators, or leach nasty chemicals in our landfills for hundreds of years. And thanks to their lightweight aerodynamics, the wind carries an estimated 1 percent of plastic bags out of trash depositories. These renegade bags end up billowing from trees, hanging from fences, or, worst of all, floating in the ocean.
In 1988, across a span of just two weeks, fifteen leatherback turtles, an endangered species, washed up dead on the beaches of Long Island. Alarmed by their deaths, marine biologists performed autopsies. They discovered that eleven of the fifteen dead turtles had ingested plastic bags that blocked their stomach openings. Leathback turtles, you see, have the unfortunate twin qualities of a taste for jellyfish and bad eye-site. To these nearly blind turtles, it seems, a submerged plastic bag looks simply delicious.
The crazy thing is that the bags, which are designed to be thrown away, are made out of a material that is designed to last forever. They are far from the only- plastic-containing disposables: think of razors, eating utensils, toothbrushes, water bottles, coffee cups, pens, combs, and on and on. Because plastic is so durable, all these things persist for hundreds of years. As a result, there are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
A thousand miles off the coast of California, in the middles of the Pacific ocean, there is a swirling soup of floating trash twice the size of the continental United States. The "garbage patch", as it's called, contains six times as much plasti, by weight, as bio-matter. Way out there in the Pacific Ocean, a thousan miles from the nearest human, plankton, jellyfish, and fish are outnumbered (by weight) six to one by plastic bags, water bottles, and other throwaway plastic tchotchkes.
In the North Pacific alone, an estimated 100,000 sea turtles and sea mammals, a million seabirds, and countless fish starve to death each year after plastic blocks their digestive tracks. A recent study on Sand Island, in the northwest Hawaiian chain, showed that 97 percent of Layson albatross chicks had ingested plastc picked up by their parents from the ocean surface and mistakenly fed to them as food.
Meanwhile, those floating plastic discards that don't choke marine animals slowly break down in the salt and sunlight until they are suspended in the water like microscopic Christmas-tree bobbles. The plankton-eaters devour them, then the big fish eat the little fish, and then guess who eats the big fish? The sushi restaurants that make dinners for us grown-ups and the fish-stick factories that make school lunches for our kids. What starts at the bottom of the food chain inevitably ends up at the top.
It turns out that each of us has, in our body, detectable amounts of up to one hundred industrial chemicals nobody had ever even heard of fifty years ago. Many of these chemicals come from the production and use of the same disposible plastic crap that fills my garbage bags. Bisphenol-A, for example, a compound used in the liners of food cans and to make disposable water bottles and other hard plastics, is a known hormone disrupter that raises the risk of certain cancers, hampers fertility, and may contribute to childhood behavioral problems such as hyperactivity.
You are what you eat, they say, and it's not just the turtles who are ingesting the palstic crap we throw away. What happens to the wildlife on this planet is an early warning sign of what's happening to us.
-From Colin Beavan's "No Impact Man"