Plastic

A Campaign To Eliminate Plastic Straws Is Sucking In Thousands Of Converts

July 3, 2017 Darryl Fears, www.washingtonpost.com Create! Oceans, Plastic, pollution

By Darryl Fears for The Washington Post - Straws are among the most common plastic items volunteers clean from beaches, along with bottles, bags and cups, conservationists say. Americans use half a billion straws every day, at least according to an estimate by Be Straw Free, based on information from straw manufacturers. That many straws could wrap around the Earth 2½ times. The slightest wind lifts plastic straws from dinner tables, picnic blankets and trash dumps, depositing them far and wide, including in rivers and oceans, where animals often mistake them for food. And they are ubiquitous. Nearly every chain restaurant and coffee shop offers straws. They’re in just about every movie theater and sit-down restaurant. Theme parks and corner stores and ice cream shops and school cafeterias freely hand them out. But they are starting to disappear because of the awareness campaign Cress and dozens of conservation groups are waging. Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom bans them, as do the food concession areas of Smithsonian Institution museums. Keith Christman, a managing director for plastics markets at the American Chemistry Council, which promotes plastics manufacturers and fights attempts to ban plastic, said in a National Geographic article two months ago that the group would do the same for attempts to eliminate plastic straws.

Fishing The Plastic Out Of The Ocean

April 17, 2017 Jessica Murray, www.trueactivist.com Create! Environment, Plastic, Water Pollution

By Jessica Murray for True Activist - An Amsterdam-based company called Plastic Whale is embarking on a positive initiative to combat plastic pollution by reusing plastic bottles in an innovative and simple way. The company work to retrieve numerous plastic bottles, along with other debris from various canals around the city. Once they have collected a large amount, they then transform the plastic material into a boat, which is cleverly then used to fish for more plastic bottles in the canals, according to reports. Thereby producing an answer to a problem within another solution. The main goal of Plastic Whale is to dramatically reduce plastic pollution and thereby clear the world’s waters of the damaging material. Plastic Whale, which describes itself as the world’s first plastic fishing company, is currently working to solve a huge global problem, with recent statistics estimating around 8 million tons of plastic trash entering waterways every year. The company’s founder and captain, Marius Smit, told EcoWatch that he imagines the world where waters are completely free of plastic...

Mexican Corp Turns Plastic Into Eco-Friendly, Affordable Homes

January 26, 2016 Amanda Froelich, www.trueactivist.com Create! Housing, Plastic, pollution, Recycling

By Amanda Froelich for True Activist - There are many problems on this planet in need of remedy, two of which are plastic pollution and extreme poverty. Every year, enough plastic is thrown away to circle the globe four times. Much of this makes its way into the oceans (an estimated 10-20 tons) from landfills and continues to swirl in garbage patches, leaking toxins into the oceans and killing off wildlife that consumes it unsuspectingly. In addition, roughly 1.2 billion people now live in extreme poverty worldwide or subsist on less than $1.25 per day.

Oceans Will Soon Contain More Plastics Than Fish By Weight

January 21, 2016 Staff, www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org Educate! New Economy, Plastic

By Staff of Ellen McArthur Foundation - Applying circular economy principles to global plastic packaging flows could transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans, according to the latest report by the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with analytical support from McKinsey & Company. The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics provides for the first time a vision of a global economy in which plastics never become waste, and outlines concrete steps towards achieving the systemic shift needed.

Forget Foam — Now We Can Grow Better Takeout Containers

January 29, 2015 Liz Core, www.grist.org Create! Ecology, Environment, Plastic

We live in a material world, people — synthetic material, that is, with all the attendant mess that makes. But how can a society addicted to Ziploc baggies, Styrofoam coffee cups, and cheap building materials do without? Lucky for us, green-minded entrepreneurs are developing sci-fi worthy replacements for these problem materials. Many of these were showcased at a conference in New York City last December, called Biofabricate — apparently “the world’s first summit dedicated to the biofabrication for future industrial and consumer products” — which, you know, cool! Here are some worthy teasers from Fast Company. . .

Sick Seabirds Warn Of Plastic Pollution In The Oceans

June 8, 2014 Elizabeth Claire Alberts, www.earthisland.org Educate! Birds, Oceans, Plastic, pollution

It’s a late May night on Lord Howe Island, and the moon gleams across the volcanic mountains and white sand beaches of this six-mile long isle off the east coast of Australia. While most people are tucked inside their houses or hotels, conservation biologist Dr. Jennifer Lavers and her colleague, naturalist Ian Hutton, don headlamps and bike to the flesh-footed shearwater colony on the northeast side of the island. Lord Howe Island is one of the two main breeding areas for this seabird in the southwest Pacific Ocean (the other is in northern New Zealand). Tonight the colony bustles with 90-day-old chicks flapping their wings as they prepare for their first 6,500-mile flight north to the Bering Sea. Even though many seabirds are affected by plastic pollution, the plight flesh-footed shearwater illustrates how widespread the problem is. Lavers and Hutton set up a makeshift research station in the colony, and handpick chicks to weigh, measure, and take feather samples. They also undertake a lavage process, guiding a tube down each bird’s throat to flush out its stomach contents. This part may seem gruesome, but the lavage provides important information about shearwater diet and nutrition. If a fledgling’s parents fed it well, it will regurgitate natural food sources like squid and fish. But more often than not, chicks will cough up something that does not belong in their stomachs – plastic.

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