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Plague of Plastics: Part 14--Next Added 100 Million Americans

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On our oceans, “In 1975, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences had estimated that all oceangoing vessels together dumped 8 million pounds of plastic annually. More recent research showed the world's merchant fleet alone shamelessly tossing around 639,000 plastic containers every day.

 

“The real reason that the world's landfills weren't overflowing with plastic, he found, was because most of it ends up in an ocean-fill. After a few years of sampling the North Pacific gyre, Moore concluded that 80 percent of mid-ocean flotsam had originally been discarded on land.”

 

Weisman wrote, “DURING HIS FIRST THOUSAND-MILE CROSSING of the gyre, Moore calculated half a pound for every one hundred square meters of debris on the surface, and arrived at three million tons of plastic. His estimate was corroborated by U.S. Navy calculations. It was the first of many staggering figures he would encounter. And it only represented visible plastic: an indeterminate amount of larger fragments get fouled by enough algae and barnacles to sink. In 1998, Moore returned with a trawling device, such as Sir Alistair Hardy had employed to sample krill, and found, incredibly, more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean's surface.  In fact, it wasn't even close: six times as much.”

 

As you read through this series, it gets uglier than you can imagine. “As for the little pellets known as nurdles, 5.5 quadrillion—about 250 billion pounds—were manufactured annually…perfect for bite-size for little creatures that the bigger creatures eat, were being flushed seaward.”

 

That half-century's total production now surpasses 1 billion tons.

 

Ladies and gentlemen of America: as you can see, it’s what you can’t see that’s doing incredible damage to our planet home.  As I said, plastics prove the worst invention of humanity. They’re insidious, sinister, menacing and deadly to this planet’s living creatures.

 

Any questions?  Why would someone knowingly toss 639,000 plastic containers into our oceans daily?  Why would Pete Coors, owner of Coors Brewing, pretend to be an environmentalist in Colorado, but spend millions of dollars to defeat our bottle/return  laws not once but twice?  Short answer:  he makes $13 million a year, but that’s not enough.  He wants more profit with total disregard for all the trash his cans, bottles and the plastic waste generated across the landscape.  Just think of all corporation heads thinking and acting like Pete Coors.  Sickening!

 

The next time you’re at the grocery checkout, they may ask, “Paper or plastic?”  You answer as you pull them out, “I’ve got my cotton bags, thank you.” 

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Frosty Wooldridge Bio: Frosty Wooldridge possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families in that he has bicycled around the globe 100,000 miles, on six continents and six times across the United States in the past 30 years. His books (more...)
 
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