Question: Have you ever heard of any enormous accumulation zones for plastic debris (also known as trash vortexes) in our oceans, namely, one called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
Result: Out of 30 Students and Staff at ACU only 2 admitted to having heard of trash vortexes in our worlds oceans...
One of the two people who had heard of this environmental catastrophe, D. McNamara, heard about it through a book and had also seen an interview with the founder of Clean Up Australia Day. I questioned him further...
Q: "How did you find out these places existed?"
A: "I read about it in a book and I also remember watching an interview with the guy who started Clean Up Australia Day. You see he went sailing around the world and came across one of these rubbish places. He said 'you know when people throw stuff away...yeah well I know where away actually is'. So he started, I think his name is Kiernan or something, Clean Up Australia Day because he found one of these places. Also he talked about how most of the rubbish comes from shipping containers. Apparently hundreds of containers fall off ships every year and they're filled with foam so they dont sink, but then they're not on the surface either. I think that's what Kiernan bumped into out there in the ocean"
---Clean Up Australia Day is a not-for-profit Australian Environmental Conservation Organisation founded by Ian Kiernan in 1989.
He later approached the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with an idea to take his clean up concept global. A Clean Up the World weekend is now held on the 3rd weekend in September each year with more than 35 million people from over 120 countries participating each year!
AKA trash vortexes, these accumulation zones for human material waste obviously affects marine life in many frightening ways.... If you think it's easy to 'look the other way' while marine life suffers deformity and death....consider the way plastics break down into toxin absorbing 'nurdles'. These highly toxic man-made krill like particles are ingested by feeders from top to bottom -infecting the entire food chain from sand worms to sharks and YOU.
We must consciously begin to reduce our output and impact. How much food do you buy comes with plastic packaging? Do you use plastic bags? Shipping containers fall off ships regularly all around the world...do you buy local or imported goods? How can we get companies to change the packaging materials they use? Seek alternatives and tell your friends....
"In Australia around 1 million tonnes of plastic materials are produced each year and a further 587,000 tonnes are imported. Packaging is the largest market for plastics, accounting for over a third of the consumption of raw plastic materials – Australians use 6 billion plastic bags every year!
We must consciously begin to reduce our output and impact. How much food do you buy comes with plastic packaging? Do you use plastic bags? Shipping containers fall off ships regularly all around the world...do you buy local or imported goods? How can we get companies to change the packaging materials they use? Seek alternatives and tell your friends....
"In Australia around 1 million tonnes of plastic materials are produced each year and a further 587,000 tonnes are imported. Packaging is the largest market for plastics, accounting for over a third of the consumption of raw plastic materials – Australians use 6 billion plastic bags every year!
Plastic packaging provides excellent protection for the product, it is cheap to manufacture and seems to last forever. Lasting forever, however, is proving to be a major environmental problem. Another problem is that traditional plastics are manufactured from non-renewable resources – oil, coal and natural gas." (Source: NOVA Science in the News. Making Packaging Greener: Biodegradable Plastics. Published by the Australian Academy of Science)
- S. Innes
No comments:
Post a Comment