EnviroLink Forum

I've been walking the beach for years picking up trash and so far, I've found only one plastic straw.

It's noble to ban them, but it's trivial.

I find at least a dozen water bottles every day, soft drink bottles, disposable razors, food wrappers, industrial bottles (oil and other fluids), plastic bags, Mylar balloons, and dozens of other items.

I think we should be working on banning single use plastic bottles. They are by far the biggest plastic trash item found on our Florida beach, outnumbering everything else combined. I am old enough to remember when drinks came in glass bottles, that carried a deposit. You brought them back to the store and got your deposit money back. Some people still discarded them, but when I was a kid we would collect them, bring them to the store, and buy candy with them.

Next get rid of those $%*#! disposable razors. Buy an electric, epilator or a good old fashioned safety razor where you just replace the blade. Come on folks, do we have to buy a new razor when the blade goes dull, or can't we buy just the blade?

Then let's work on the straws.

Bob

Very true. The numbers of sea mammals and turtles found injured by plastic waste seems to be growing too.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

So how do we stop it? It's impossible to not buy plastic, but it is possible to reduce your consumption of plastic up to 90%.

There is no reason to buy drinks in a plastic bottle. I have glass bottles that I fill with tap water and take with me when I leave home. And don't think bottled water is any better, it has been proven again and again that most bottled water is just tap water from a different muncipality.

There is no reason to buy disposable plastic razors when you can buy a safety razor and only replace the part that wears out, the blade.

Same with pens and pencils, get the kind with a replaceable refill so you don't waste the entire pen or pencil every time you wear one out.

There is no reason to take home your purchases in those plastic 't-shirt bags' when you can buy a reusable one. And if you go into the store to buy one or two items and don't have your bag with you, just tell the cashier, "No thanks, I don't need a bag" and carry the item out in your hand instead of carrying the item out in a bag in your hand.

There are a lot of products where one brand uses less plastic than a competing brand. Choose the less plastic brand.

In the 30 years I've been walking the same beach, I've seen the amount of trash multiply. I've also seen the wildlife diminish greatly.

I know the real problem is too many people having too many babies, but we're here, we can't undo a birth, but we can do what we must to lower our impact on the planet.

Bob

Yes, but the fish are all clean-shaven now.

:)


We walked our 4 miles yesterday (for exercise) picked up over a dozen soft drink bottles, many more small pieces of plastic that could have come from packaging or clear plastic bags, a yellow gallon jug with a red cap (no label) some broken I assume boat parts, a lot of food packaging, and a few pieces of Styrofoam cups and go-boxes, but no straws and no razors.

It is sea turtle nesting season and those clear plastic scraps could very easily be mistaken by a turtle as a jellyfish.

We probably have cleared a ton of trash in the 30 years we have been walking this undeveloped beach, and the amount seems to be getting worse and worse year after year.

Nonb

Deep down way too many people do not care. They do not think of the bigger picture than their own little bubble nor do they consider that "just one little bit of trash in the whole big ocean" is cumulative with everyone else for as long as there have been people.

_________________
With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

It is bad enough in Florida, but 90% in the oceans comes down 2 rivers in Africa and 8 rivers in Asia. Some apparently shipped there from the US and Europe. No more single use plastics should be first then no more non-biodegradable plastics. Then outlaw having kids for 20 years, and V-8s and then all but electric/hybrid cars. No more diesel shipping, only sail and solar. Then no more jets, only solar powered aircraft. No more air conditioners or coal fired power plants, just solar, wind, wave and tidal, hydro, and Gen 4 only nuclear to use the waste and remaining fuel. Break up corporations and go to local production. No tax incentives for negative behaviors, or churches. Hang most of the present and past politicians who screwed things up or became millionaires while in office. All new construction must be waste using, re-cycled, re-used and indigenous products for materials. All water low use and recycling systems. No more lawns or artificial lake golf courses, with roof top and yard gardening mandatory. No more immigration and collect all fines owed by encouragers of illegals and the illegals themselves, plus mass deportation of them and their kids. No more unearned benefits for anyone. Lower the levels of acceptance and compassion, and let people die in this grossly overpopulated world. Death penalties in two weeks or less to all three time burglars on up, and end the profiteering prison system. No more crimes without victims on the books. legalize all drugs and let people OD of they want. No more cremations or preservative with all burials composting, same with waste. End the flush and forget, and make human waste into true compost. Back to a lot of the ways we had before.

The problem with all these ideas is that they should have been instituted Earth Day One. Now the oceans have absorbed enough extra heat to melt the sea ice cover on 1500GTs of shallow water methane clathrates in the Arctic by around 2024. Then latent heat effect sets in and a couple years later the stuff starts massive blowouts and goes into runaway releases to the point of the global temperature going up 1*F per year until all crops fail in about three years then most surface life begins going rapidly extinct, then the oceans as humidity goes up to 100% and total global cloud cover shuts off thermal gain from the sun for 100K years of acid rains from SO2 and NO producing bacteria thriving. It stops at deep ocean cold and gradually that cools it down to where the clouds open and cyanobacteria can restore the atmosphere again. In several million years life can re-evolve and many millions more to full diversity of strange or not so strange new species.

Or an artificial aerosol event can be carefully done with buried nukes, and a long global winter, with the survivors replanting the Earth and building at least 100,000 CO2 to carbonate factories or similar types, with refrigeration units keeping the oceans cold while the CO2 returns to 300ppm in two centuries or so. Survivors selected to not have the negative characteristics of overbreeding, stupidity and greed. A new spirituality/morality of sustainability and replenishing the Earth replacing religions and cultures. Massive cleanup of the oceans and land. After all, a bottleneck is better than extinction of most life.


What will happen besides increasing chaos that we already see? Most alive now will see. No one wants to die, but no matter what, billions will. All 8 billion (then) or 7.95 billion? (with underground stocked fortresses and cities surviving the global winter but not an extinction event). It will stink, and not be fun. It would have been much easier to go one child families and 'green' living 50 years ago. I have said it since 1967, and lived it. I may not make it to the end myself, being old and disabled from my war wounds/injury, but I see it coming and have since then, evolving from a mere one species stimulated overpopulation to "crash" to a Permian style ELE.

There is another possibility many discount, and that is, besides doing the actions of lowering your eco-footprint, pray to God the Creator for Divine Intervention to restore our biosphere. There is a power greater than ourselves that can help. I am living proof of that.

_________________
"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle
“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

I truly believe I am witnessing the beginning of the end of humankind. IMHO there are simply too many of us and the ones that are here are having too many offspring. It's like an algae bloom in a lake, but in slow motion. I think we are close to the point of no return, and I suspect we may have already passed it.

I walked my 4 miles today, took over a dozen water/soft drink bottles, various food wrappers, small pieces of jellyfish sized plastic shreds, a couple of broken buckets, and a bag full of other various pieces of plastic trash (but still no straws).

The worst thing I found was a loaded baby disposable diaper. This irritated me (which I know it should not do). I silently cursed the parents.

For my two children I bought the wife diaper service and we used cloth diapers. The only time we used disposables was when going on a trip where we would be away too long, and we never-ever disposed of them improperly. What's with these people?

Then I get to the pavilion where the picnic tables are, and there were beer cans, soda cans, more bottles, food wrappers, little containers of condiments, paper/plastic cups, and garbage all over the ground. Some of it 2 feet away from the trash barrels with critter-proof lids on them.

And by this time when more people are arriving the parking lot is filling with dozens of huge V8 pickup trucks that have never had anything more than a bag of groceries in the bed parking getting ready for another day of trashing the planet. Do people really need 2 tons of gas guzzling steel to bring the groceries home and go back and forth to work?

What have we come to? How did we get so uncivilized? What is wrong with us? It's Memorial Day weekend here in the USA. Is this what our service people died for? So we can free to be slobs and ruin the country the heroic folks gave the ultimate sacrifice for?

Sorry for the rant.

I know that our efforts bring a sack full of plastic off the beach in the long run doesn't make a dent. I know that our shopping choices to avoid as much single use plastic as possible doesn't make a dent. But I know that I have to do it.

My feelings are usually that I'm doing a bit to help but some days they run to this is not making a trillionth of a percent of change. Most of the time I enjoy the fact that I'm cleaning up. It's the attitude I try to cultivate all the time, but I think the diaper may have ticked me off. I'm OK and back to normal now.

I always enjoy the walk, the sand, the greenery, the ghost crabs, the birds, the fish, and even the Sargasso weed on the beach.

What I'd like to know, and what probably no one can answer, is how to get more people to stop buying those water bottles, stop trashing the planet, and perhaps picking up something along the way.

Bob

Sometimes I just don't know how people can be so senseless and uncaring.

Today's beach walk brought up the usual, mostly water and soft drink bottles (I think they should be banned and we should go back to glass with a deposit), food packaging, one fishing lure (which we gave to a friendly fisherman on the beach), assorted unidentifiable fractured parts that could have come from boats, little jellyfish sized remnants of plastic bags, one tampon inserting tube, and again, no straws. A huge plastic oil drum was washed ashore. It was empty so we rolled it above the high tide level so it won't wash out again. Hopefully the people who patrol the beach for sea turtle nests will know what to do with it.

But it was a beautiful day for a walk. The breeze was nice, the water was clear but with Sargasso weed rafts, ghost crabs ran to and fro, sand fleas ran and buried themselves with each wave, and pelicans, gulls, an terns scooped fish dinners from the ocean. We had a nice time and left the beach a little nicer than it was when we arrived.

Bob

Walk on the beach produced a light load today. A few water/soft drink bottles, a couple of scraps of unidentifiable plastic and a couple of food wrappers. Still no drinking straws. Perhaps we're barking up the wrong tree. Ban plastic drink bottles and go back to glass with a deposit bottles.

It was a beautiful day, we disturbed dozens of gulls and terns on the sand as we walked by, small fish darting in the shallows, and pelicans were diving in the water, which was warm and saltier than usual. It was a good day for a swim and to pick up trash.

Bob

Yesterday's walk produced over a dozen water/soft drink bottles plus a few food wrappers, a child's toy, and plenty of plastic bottle caps.

I don't know how to do it, but I think we should go back to glass, returnable bottles with a deposit on them. Bottles with English and 'foreign' language labels and their lids are by far the biggest offenders on our beach. (BTW, we still have never found a drinking straw or cotton bud on the beach - so why ban them? Easy target? Get to the real problem, the straws won't make a dent.)

Bob

I feel good about helping clean the beach. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed or that my contributions aren't the proverbial drop in a bucket.

Banning plastic straws and cotton buds have been getting a lot of press. I don't understand why people are ranting about these items and not the biggest offenders. Low hanging fruit?

It seems to me that banning these straws and buds, items that I have never found on the beach, is doing less good than me and my wife picking up discarded bottles and other trash a couple of times per week.

I used to be on Facebook (quit because I don't like fraudulent voter manipulation). When I was there I mentioned this to other self-proclaimed environmentalists, they agreed, and continued to campaign against straws and cotton buds, and never once re-posting or restating ideas about drink bottles.

I also mentioned the problem with Air Conditioners and their huge impact on global warming, and actually got a few "I can't give up my AC" comments.

So I suspect that they haven't climbed on the plastic bottle bandwagon because they like their soft drinks.

Are so many of us who call ourselves environmentalists not willing to sacrifice for the good of the planet, and yet want others to make the sacrifice for them?

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, and I wish there was some way I could get others involved on the real problems as I see them. But alas, I can only do what I personalty can do.

I don't buy drinks in plastic bottles but use reusable glass bottles that I fill with water at home. I don't use the AC. I avoid buying things in single-use plastic as much as I can (sometimes it's impossible) and will even go without unnecessary products if I can't find a non-plastic alternative. I drive as if I'm in the "Mobil Economy Run" of years gone by and get 100 extra miles per tank of gas over the EPA rating. we generate about a cubic foot of garbage per week. Others put out huge bins and we put out a tiny little container. I've planted dozens of trees on my half acre, and lots of ground cover that doesn't need mowing. I don't have a lawn. I try.

It feels like we are losing ground but we can't help but doing what we can.

Bob