Tuesday, July 27, 2010

what ya doing

So you have five minutes and you want to learn something... something that may change you - go to www.thestoryofstuff.com and watch the video on bottled water. There are other videos too - I watched the bottled water one a while ago and the video actually got me to stop buying bottled water. Not that I was this massive consumer of it, but the short video just makes you think twice about buying a bottle of water.

What else? Well did you know that right now there is an assumption that every square kilometre of the ocean has 13,000 pieces of plastic in it (bottles, containers, etc) and while this assumption seems a bit (a lot) obscure and highly unknown since no one is actually tracking every square inch/km of the ocean we do have a major problem in the Pacific - there is something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - this is an invisible mass of plastics waste that is somewhere between the size of Texas and continental US (yes, 48 states worth of plastic waste) It carries high concentrations of pelagic (means open sea) plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris. 80% is waste from the shore - from our coast line and Asia's and 20% is from ships (cruise and commodity). You can't see the 'patch' from space because it represents large pieces of plastic and plastics that are breaking down into polymers.

Did you learn something new?

1 comment:

M said...

Gross! Also so wrong! I only drink tap water, Walter thinks I'm crazy but I don't see the point in paying for something that is free.