We're drowning in plastic. I have seen terrifying things that haunt my dreams. I will talk about this later.
Please, for the love of our planet, stop buying cartons of the tiny 16 oz bottled waters. I see them everywhere now. People fill their apartments with them. You have a dishwasher, a water purifier, clean tap water, expensive designer glassware, but you drink out of individual use plastic bottles and toss them into the trash.
It feels good to break open the sealed plastic cap, drink the pathetic 16oz of water and throw it away. Repeat an hour later. Each one is a little life accomplishment, a small boost of happiness. But don't pat yourself on the back. Every time you crack open a plastic bottle, you kill a sea turtle. It is the creation of the devil. When you smoke cigarettes, at least you can make valid argument you are only killing yourself.
I have spent time in remote islands around the world past few years, places where there are no roads, no electricity, no houses, no cellphone towers, no people.
Terrifyingly, these beaches are filled with plastic. The more remote the beach is, the more plastic I see on it. Yet I see no plastic on the people filled beaches of Hawaii, or Miami. How could this be?
It's because we can't stand the sight of washed up plastic in our own back yard so we clean it up daily. A race of self righteous hypocrites. We sweep up the beach and throw it right back in the ocean. This out of sight out of mind is a really nasty problem. Can we have a week every month when cleaning public beaches is prohibited? Let the plastic wash up, and let it stay there. Let your kids and dogs play in that filth for at least a few days.
Screw you Aquafina, Desani, Poland spring, all you other irresponsible corporate criminals who are making a huge profit while knowingly and unnecessarily destroying our oceans. Billions of marketing dollars poured into a product nobody needs.
A few horrifying facts about this mess we've created.
1. In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day.
2. Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
3. 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
4. Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
5. We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce.
6. The average American throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year.
7. Plastic accounts for around 10 percent of the total waste we generate.
8. The production of plastic uses around eight percent of the world’s oil production (bioplastics are not a good solution as they require food source crops).
9. Americans throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles every year (source: Brita)
10. Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottle could end up on every mile of beach throughout the world.
11. Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.
12. 46 percent of plastics float (EPA 2006) and it can drift for years before eventually concentrating in the ocean gyres.
13. It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade.
You can do a few things to help this problem:
1. Never buy bottled water for your home. Ever. Don't be a selfish prick.
2. Tell your friends they need to stop doing it or you will not be friends.
3. Use a washable glass or reuse a bottle water at the office. The plastic bottle you just threw out after 1 use lasts 5000 years! Refill it for god's sake.
For the governments:
1. Require printing pictures of dead baby sea turtles, dead baby dolphins and eventually dead babies on every water bottle. Especially the high end products with billion dollar marketing budget. In vivid HD color.
2. Add a hefty pollution tax to these products.
We've survived for 1000s of years without plastic bottles and now we're going to suffocate ourselves because it's trendy.
UPDATE
Shortly after publishing this article, I was happy to see San Francisco Banned Plastic Bottles. No doubt as result of 1000s of bloggers, journalists, environmentalists and activists like me and you.
Please, for the love of our planet, stop buying cartons of the tiny 16 oz bottled waters. I see them everywhere now. People fill their apartments with them. You have a dishwasher, a water purifier, clean tap water, expensive designer glassware, but you drink out of individual use plastic bottles and toss them into the trash.
It feels good to break open the sealed plastic cap, drink the pathetic 16oz of water and throw it away. Repeat an hour later. Each one is a little life accomplishment, a small boost of happiness. But don't pat yourself on the back. Every time you crack open a plastic bottle, you kill a sea turtle. It is the creation of the devil. When you smoke cigarettes, at least you can make valid argument you are only killing yourself.
I have spent time in remote islands around the world past few years, places where there are no roads, no electricity, no houses, no cellphone towers, no people.
Terrifyingly, these beaches are filled with plastic. The more remote the beach is, the more plastic I see on it. Yet I see no plastic on the people filled beaches of Hawaii, or Miami. How could this be?
 |
| Holding a healthy baby sea turtle in Guanaja, Honduras, 01/2015 |
Screw you Aquafina, Desani, Poland spring, all you other irresponsible corporate criminals who are making a huge profit while knowingly and unnecessarily destroying our oceans. Billions of marketing dollars poured into a product nobody needs.
A few horrifying facts about this mess we've created.
1. In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day.
2. Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
3. 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
4. Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
5. We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce.
6. The average American throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year.
7. Plastic accounts for around 10 percent of the total waste we generate.
8. The production of plastic uses around eight percent of the world’s oil production (bioplastics are not a good solution as they require food source crops).
9. Americans throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles every year (source: Brita)
10. Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottle could end up on every mile of beach throughout the world.
11. Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.
12. 46 percent of plastics float (EPA 2006) and it can drift for years before eventually concentrating in the ocean gyres.
13. It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade.
You can do a few things to help this problem:
1. Never buy bottled water for your home. Ever. Don't be a selfish prick.
2. Tell your friends they need to stop doing it or you will not be friends.
3. Use a washable glass or reuse a bottle water at the office. The plastic bottle you just threw out after 1 use lasts 5000 years! Refill it for god's sake.
For the governments:
1. Require printing pictures of dead baby sea turtles, dead baby dolphins and eventually dead babies on every water bottle. Especially the high end products with billion dollar marketing budget. In vivid HD color.
2. Add a hefty pollution tax to these products.
We've survived for 1000s of years without plastic bottles and now we're going to suffocate ourselves because it's trendy.
UPDATE
Shortly after publishing this article, I was happy to see San Francisco Banned Plastic Bottles. No doubt as result of 1000s of bloggers, journalists, environmentalists and activists like me and you.
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