O.T. One word, Plastics (caution - depressing)

[A.K. Boomer]

Anyone catch the last 60 minutes episode?

Watched it the other night and was astounded at their special coverage on "plastics" and all what were doing to the planet with it,
First and foremost is the amount of plastics in the ocean and just how much havoc it is wreaking with just about every living creature out there, but for us it's out of sight out of mind, what blows me away is the experts in the fields projection that by the year 2050 the oceans will contain more plastic then they do fish!!!

gawd - the vast oceans! what have we done to our world?

they covered it extensively and also exposed the supposed plastic recycling efforts as a total fraud - turns out it's just actually a "feel good" thing for people to do and avoid upsetting the commerce and business as usual, capitalism at its "best",,,
not even 10% of what we turn in is actually "recycled" and I use the term recycled loosely - because of that less then 10% it has been getting shipped over to china who has just been stock-piling it because there's so much, it's simply not practical to put it to use, and now China has recently stopped taking that in - so it's going to impoverished nations who have no intent on actually doing anything with it - it's just a cash cow for them with extreme consequences for everything and everybody in the long haul - but don't worry - at the rate were going the long haul is just right around the corner...

[BCRider]

Man is also single handedly responsible for the decimation of fishing on the Grand banks. And then to top it off we also caused the whole seal hunt on the east coast to be halted and the newly burgeoning seal population is greatly slowing down the recovery of the fish stocks.

If there's one thing mankind is good at it is screwing things up. So learning through 60 minutes that many countries are still dumping their trash into the ocean thru your post is no surprise to me. It's freaking sad but sadly no surprise.....

The planet was doomed to destruction by the sun eventually going nova. But I'm sure we'll have drowned ourselves into extinction in trash long before that.

[wierdscience]

We all but stopped developement of clean power generation by burning garbage in the 1970's.The result were massive landfills to pollute the ground water,garbage barges to ship the trash overseas,billions spent on recycling schemes and now plastic being dumped in the oceans.

Time to go back to the future and use all that fuel that's going to waste.

[Doc Nickel]

One thing to keep in mind is when they say "more plastic than fish", they mean numerically. IE, one piece of plastic, one fish. Two pieces of plastic, two fish, etc.

And since the overwhelmingly vast majority of the plastic in the ocean is pelletized feed stock- the raw pellets that are fed into the injection molders- "twenty million pieces of plastic" might equal maybe a quarter of a ton of total material.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of said plastic in the oceans comes from eight or ten rivers in Asia- not that we don't dump enough of our own, but it's a literal drop in the bucket compared to the overseas manufacturers.

Doc.

[A.K. Boomer]

Doc why are we dumping in the unused raw stock?

Geeze as if the trash waste isn't enough - so we create it never to be used and then just dump it into the oceans? sorry but that does not make me feel any better... maybe even worse...

[RB211]

Plastics in the ocean...

[PStechPaul]

[bob_s]

So why does the vast majority of people believe that we, as a species, are not subject to the same fate of extinction as say trilobites?

Sentient or not if its going to happen it will.

[Dan Dubeau]

So why does the vast majority of people believe that we, as a species, are not subject to the same fate of extinction as say trilobites?

Sentient or not if its going to happen it will.

Na, won't happen. "We'll" enforce an extinction tax to prevent it.

[JoeLee]

I've said from day one when they first started using those plastic grocery bags that they were going to end up being an environmental hazard someday.
My reason for thinking this back then was I would see them stuck up in the tree tops, in bushes, blowing around in the wind. When I would go out hunting I would even see them up in trees and hedge rows in some pretty isolated areas that were away from houses and roads. They blow all over the place and don't break down. Even seen them in wood chuck holes, bits and pieces of them in bird nests etc. Found a dead fox one day that apparently choked to death one one.

JL................

[140mower]

Something that saddens me in all this, is that everyone knows plastics are a problem, so why not sell 3d printers to the masses so everyone can make something from "scratch", only to toss it in the garbage because the first however many didn't work out..... I miss the days we used to make things out of wood and metal....It seems the deeper the hole, the faster we dig.

[wdtom44]

Not that we shouldn't be recycling and not making so much throw away stuff but the problems will not be solved and will still get worse until the world figures out you can't keep putting more and more people on. Like cows in a field, it will only support so many. Sure, technology can put it off but at some point you have to put a limit on the no. of cows the field can support and have them live healthy lives. We age going for quantity, hot quality. One billion people would be plenty.

[Doc Nickel]

Doc why are we dumping in the unused raw stock?

-First off, we aren't. Some of it winds up spilled due to a shipping problem (caught in a storm, cargo container goes overboard, etc.) but the majority of it winds up in the ocean through those aforementioned rivers, which get it from a great many manufacturing plants situated along those rivers. Pelletized feed stock is spilled any number of ways, from workers literally shovelling it haphazardly from bins into hoppers, to tipped train cars, to bins being dropped off of forklifts.

Since the feed stock is so cheap- literally less than a penny a pound- and trying to sweep it up could introduce foreign matter (dirt and junk) that could damage expensive injection machines and molds, any spilled material is typically just swept aside or dumped outside in heaps. Where the wind, rain and other forces end up washing it into the river, if it's not dumped there deliberately just to get rid of it.

Doc.

[Doc Nickel]

So why does the vast majority of people believe that we, as a species, are not subject to the same fate of extinction as say trilobites?

-Considering the trilobites existed over a period of some 250 to 270 million years, I'd say we'd be doing pretty darn good, in that case.

They blow all over the place and don't break down.

-Blow, yes, break down, no. Those things start breaking down in a couple of years, and are basically flakes after 10 or 12. Might take longer in dry climates, a little less in wet, but they're by no means "indestructible". I've occasionally dealt with having to clean trash and garbage out that's been sitting around for a few years- in the back of an abandoned car or truck, for example, or trash left by campers, tourists or squatters, etc. After just a couple of years in the weather, the bags are too fragile to hold anything, and a few years after that, basically need to be raked or swept up.

Doc.

[A.K. Boomer]

as far as the bags totally breaking down it's not that simple - many lie on the bottom of the ocean where no UV gets to them - they also leach out all their toxic goodness whey they do finally start to give it up some and degrade,

but that's just bags - then there's bottles and caps - and packaging and everything else imaginable, the caps are horrible as many creatures eat them thinking they are food - all the different colors and stuff is like a lure to them, then they cannot digest them and they keep building up in their system till they die because they got no real room for real food, and if and when the caps start breaking down they just start being lures for smaller creatures - it's messed up bad, nothing really escapes it on a chemistry level,,, https://cdn.iflscience.com/images/8c...u-d-expect.jpg

what's crazy is allot of this is happening in some pretty remote island area's - no place is safe now, the currents take it everywhere