Plastic; Great pacific Garbage Patch & The Road Ahead
The existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a staggering instance of the extent of plastic abuse.
Imagine yourself sailing in a ship across the Pacific Ocean. After witnessing the sangfroid blue ocean, rich marine fauna, your ship will come to an expanse - literally spread hundreds of nautical miles filled with floating plastic garbage. Folks, I am not making this up.:eek: The Great pacific garbage patch exists and it happens because of debris getting jammed due to the currents of the North pacific Gyre.
Closer home, the famed sea front near Gateway of India in Mumbai is at times dotted with black and white polythene bags. Another common sight in urban landscape are the heaps of plastic material (be it CDs, polythene bags, bottles etc) seen near garbage dumps and landfills. Fellow forum members might have noticed prevalence of plastic material in the droppings of herbivorous animals too.
I would not like to call myself a technology phobic person and I am game for using technology for betterment of life; but lately this abuse of plastic is discomfiting me. Though, impact of plastic to environment and its slow bio-degradable nature is well known, we are doing pitifully nothing to address this threat.
It’s not like we are doing nothing. For example, look beneath any plastic bottle; you will find a triangular mark with chasing arrows. The marking informs about how to recycle that plastic. Recently, a new type of biodegradable resin has made its debut in the United States, called Plastarch Material (PSM). It is heat, water, and oil resistant and sees 70% degradation in 90 days. Biodegradable plastics based on polylactic acid (once derived from dairy products, now from cereal crops such as maize) have entered the marketplace, for instance as polylactates as disposable sandwich packs.
But still, today recycling of plastic has proved cumbersome and a costly affair.
Are there any alternatives?
It depends.
We can lessen plastic usage by changing our habits. Next time when we go to the super market, we could carry a bag from home. You could connect with the super-market manager and extol him to use paper bags for packing. Buy rewritable CDs instead of writable CDs, better still; buy a high capacity pen-drive.:D Do not dispose polythene bags just like that; try reusing them (as garbage bags for example).
But herein lays the challenge. Public habit cannot bring about change for good. The public is entitled to feasible alternative to plastic. Let’s be honest, plastic has great utility. What is needed is more investment; both in producing bio-degradable plastic and ways to recycle plastic products.
This brings in an interesting dilemma:
Plastic recycling should be the prerogative of:
• We – the people (tax payers);
• The government; or
• The plastic manufacturers?
I am ambiguous about it. Do we need higher funding to clear the plastic mess? Should an environment conservation cess be created; to be paid by the plastic makers & public for appropriate use?
Or do we resign to realism?
This reminds of Pixar movie Wall-E. The plastic waste on Earth became so widespread, humans left Earth for good to live in a gargantuan spaceship for 700 years. They delegated the responsibility of cleaning Earth to an army of robot, called Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth). WALL-E compacts plastic debris and stacks them up into neat skyscrapers, so that non-biodegradable plastic occupies less space!:(
Perhaps we could do that. Allocate a space as big as Mumbai in some remote part in India; compress plastic debris and stack them up so as to save space.
What’s your view?
Common pills, plastics making male fish lay eggs
I found this article that talks about pills and plastics inducing feminine characteristics in fish.
Sabyasachi
Common pills, plastics making male fish lay eggs
ANI 11 October 2009, 06:27pm IST
WASHINGTON: Plastics, pesticides and even common prescription drugs are releasing synthetic and natural hormones into rivers and streams, which
is leading to unintended consequences on wildlife, causing some male fish to become feminised and lay eggs.
In a recent report, it was found that one third of small mouth bass were feminised in nine major U.S. river basins, and almost all of the rivers and streams tested in the United States contained some hormonally active chemicals.
And now in a conference, the researchers are focussing on the long-term consequences of hormones and endocrine disruptors in the environment.
"It is one of the hottest topics in environmental biology right now. The biological activity of these compounds both in terms of other species and, potentially, ourselves is something that scientists are becoming more and more aware of through research," said Dr. John McLachlan, director of the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, which is hosting the conference.
Now scientists are looking at the proliferation of prescription drugs like antidepressants, contraceptives and other medications that are ending up in wastewater after being taken by people.
Most municipal water treatment systems don't have the ability to neutralize pharmaceutical compounds in wastewater so they end up in rivers and streams, said McLachlan.
"They all end up in different places in the environment. What do they do to the wildlife that absorb them and, more importantly, what do they do to our water sources?" he says.
A recent study found feminised male fish in almost a third of 111 sampling sites in nine major U.S. river basins and scientists are studying whether endocrine disruptors are responsible.
Tyron Hayes, a leading expert in intersexed amphibians, will be speaking at the conference about his research on the effects of endocrine disruptors on wildlife.
The conference also discusses how hormones affect the body and endocrine system and how they may play a role in diseases like breast cancer.
The findings will be discussed in the Tenth International Symposium on Environment and Hormones (E.hormone 2009).
The original article can be found here:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/h...ow/5112683.cms
Plastic causes worry in Gir for Forest Department
Plastic causes worry in Gir for Forest Department
Nov 29, 2011, 05.55AM IST
AHMEDABAD: The day is not far when an Asiatic lion chokes on a plastic bag in the only place it calls home - the Gir forest. Environment activists have removed six tonnes of plastic from around Mount Girnar, which is home to 24 lions on the edge of Gir sanctuary.
Every year, lakhs of devotees come for the four-day 'Lili Parikrama' that begins and ends at the Bhavnath temple on Mount Girnar. This year the parikrama began on November 6. In the process, devotees leave behind pouches of country liquor, gutkha packets, water bottles and wrappings of wafers and biscuits.
The fair, organized by local people, sadhus, police and forest department officials, has now been curtailed to 9.6 km from the original 19.3 km that it was spread across. But the mountain of plastic only seems to be growing in size every year, especially since it has become a huge tourist attraction due to the 'Khushboo Gujarat Ki' ad campaigns. M A Kant, the Junagadh range forest officer , said they loaded more than 15 tractors with garbage after cleaning the forest.
Junagadh MLA Mahendra Mashru , who helped in the clean-up , said, "We will need at least three to four more rounds to ensure all the plastic is removed from the forest." Forest officials are worried after post-mortem revealed there were plastic bags in the stomach of many of the herbivores that died in the forest. Herbivores like Chital, Sambhar and Nilgai are the main prey base of the big cats. The plastic waste when consumed by herbivores clogs their intestine, which results in death. An officer said lions usually don't eat plastic waste but there was a fear they may consume it while feasting on a herbivore. Dr Meena Venkataraman , a member of Wildlife Institute of India said, "The central government has already banned plastic bags and should definitely be kept out of a delicate ecosystem like Gir."
Plastics: Fungi to come to our rescue?
There may be some light at the end of the tunnel.
Researchers from Yale University have claimed to found a fungi in the Amazon rainforests which can eat up polyurethane. In a paper published in the journal "Applied and Environmental Microbiology" they have mentioned that
they isolated endophytes that live in the inner tissues of plant stems and screened them for their ability to degrade polyurethane. "Several active organisms were identified, including two distinct isolates of Pestalotiopsis microspora with the ability to efficiently degrade and utilize PUR as the sole carbon source when grown anaerobically."
They further added "each of the more than 300000 land plant species on earth potentially hosts multiple endhophyte species." So further exploration of of properties of endophytes could potentially reveal many more properties and perhaps the ability to degrade other plastic compounds. Endophytes reach their greatest diversity in tropical rainforests. So it is imperative that we protect our tropical rainforests so that at sometime in future mankind may discover potential saviours in form of these endophytes who can help in removing the pollution that we are causing.
More details can be found here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...n-scourge.html
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Consequences of Dumping thrash in Water bodies
Video info "This video is about an island in the ocean at 2000 km from any other coast line.
Nobody lives, only birds and yet ...............
You will not believe your eyes!!!!!!!
This film should be seen by the entire world, please don't throw anything into the sea. Unbelievable, just look at the consequences!!!!! "
http://www.facebook.com/video/embed?...00089470495874
Dolphin chokes to death by plastic bags
A dolphin is reported to have choked to death off Sutrapada coast, in Gujarat due to swallowing of plastic bags.
This 14.4 foot long dolphin weighing over a ton was found dead and the autopsy on its body revealed that there were four thick plastic bags in its stomach and it had died of choking. This is the first time a dolphin was found to have choked by plastic bags. This indicates the rising level of pollution in general and across Gujarat's coastline in particular.
Earlier it was an elephant which was found dead close to the Sabrimala forests having swallowed polythene and food packaged with their wrappers. In evolutionary terms development of plastics is a very recent phenomena and the wildlife cannot understand to avoid it nor is it evolved to digest it.
This dolphin death is a serious indication of our lack of waste disposal systems. We need a complete ban on plastics in our environmentally fragile areas, tourist places, hill stations and protected areas. The sooner we realise this need and implement it, the better we will be.