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Remote Pacific Island Is the Most Plastic-Contaminated Spot Yet Surveyed (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Plastic is durable -- very, very durable --
which is why we like it. Since it started being mass-produced in the 1950s, annual production has increased 300-fold. Because plastic is so durable, when our kids grow up and we purge our toy chests, or even just when we finish a bottle of laundry detergent or shampoo, it doesn't actually go away. While we're recycling increasing amounts of plastic, a lot of it still ends up in the oceans. Floating garbage patches have brought some attention to the issue of our contamination of the seas. But it's not just the waters themselves that have ended up cluttered with plastic. A recent survey shows that a staggering amount of our stuff is coming ashore on the extremely remote Henderson Island. Henderson Island is a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Pitcairn Group of Islands in the South Pacific, roughly half way between New Zealand and Peru. According to UNESCO, Henderson is one of the best examples we have of an elevated coral atoll ecosystem. It was colonized by Polynesians between the 12th and 15th centuries but has been uninhabited by humans since then. It is of interest to evolutionary biologists because it has 10 plant species and four bird species that are only found there. Despite its uninhabited status and its extremely remote location, a recent survey of beach plastic on Henderson Island revealed that the island has the highest density of debris reported anywhere in the world: an estimated minimum of 37.7 million items weighing 17.6 tons. This represents the total amount of plastic that is produced in the world every 1.98 seconds. Further reading: Here And Now
Islam is an enemy to civilized humanity.
Sharia may work fine to abuse women in mud huts and keep them out of school, but it is in violent conflict with civilized people everywhere.
Donald Trump jerked off Saudi Arabia (15 of 19 hijackers) and licked the king's balls, but Saudi women aren't allowed to drive.
In Mecca, the capitol of Islam, women are not allowed to drive.
Islam is a cancer on humanity.
If it mattered to anyone, they'd go there and clean up. Last week I saw almost zero plastic at the local beach. Presumably because it matters to someone enough that they cleaned it up.
Urh, when they photoshop in ball shaped things that have none of the sand on them, and have bright false color....yuk Amateur photoshop job.
But that's just for illustration, that beach won't even be on that remote island.
My main point:
Nylon eating bacteria have evolved:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria
PET plastic eating bacteria have evolved:
https://phys.org/news/2016-03-newly-bacteria-plastic-bottles.html
I'm not saying we don't have to do something about it in the short/mid term, I'm saying don't get to use to plastics being indestructable, because they're no more indestructable soon than wood.
Evolution is amazing.
Plastic has great utility (as long as it's safe), it's disposable plastic that's the problem. And much of it is just for convenience that's not necessarily all that convenient.
As an example -- I've been drinking water from disposable plastic bottles for over a decade and just recently switched to refilling water at my local store. At 50 cents a gallon I pay less for higher quality water in a BPA-free container. I had thought that's too much of a hassle but with "double buffering" it's actually less hassle than the bottled water, it's cheaper, tastier, and supposedly healthier.
Proof: When forced to choose between their hatred of Trump or their love of Muslims, liberals choose hate.
Here you have much richer deposits of hydrocarbons right here on this planet, you can skip the whole rocket-four-year-round-trip thing. Show me how you can harvest this abundant resource with such low overhead and make money from it.
Proof - due to catastrophic mental incapacity, Trump supporters see everything in terms of "liberals"
I guess when that Saudi fellating Russian owned turncoat takes a steaming dump on his desk, you can be the first to blame "liberals".
Islam is an enemy to civilized humanity.
Sharia may work fine to abuse women in mud huts and keep them out of school, but it is in violent conflict with civilized people everywhere.
Donald Trump jerked off Saudi Arabia (15 of 19 hijackers) and licked the king's balls, but Saudi women aren't allowed to drive.
In Mecca, the capitol of Islam, women are not allowed to drive.
Islam is a cancer on humanity.
This is an important point you bring up:
The chemicals from the plastic in the water are clearly what is causing conservatives to lose their grip on reality and it is certainly what is turning the freaking frogs gay.
Look at the containers and material in the photos. They are almost all from fishing or costal areas, and likely from South America.
Many 3rd world countries just through their trash in the streets and have no concept of public cleanliness. If the trash was coming from the US, you'd see it on our shores as well, but you don't.
Go look (google) photos of 3rd world country streets, homes and neighborhoods. They just don't have a sanitation system, nor seem to care to create one. Maybe we could export our sanitation tech to India, Ghana, etc...
"... an estimated minimum of 37.7 million items weighing 17.6 tons. This represents the total amount of plastic that is produced in the world every 1.98 seconds".
If that's true, then it's a staggering and sobering statistic. In nice round numbers, call it 8 tons per second. That's over 690,000 tons of plastic produced per day! Given that plastic is largely made from a non-renewable resource, and that it takes a huge amount of energy to produce, and that much of it is used frivolously... Talk about fouling our own nest! As a species we are remarkably good at choosing short term gain that causes long term pain. Sadness...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Aside from submitting your thesis to the Ig Nobel committee; the math supports your claim. If only John Nash could present the award to you, that would be epic.
but no one has been able to produce a single picture of it yet. A friend claimed to have seen a mass of floating plastic bags near Fiji in 1992, but the only pictures he could produce were close-ups like all of the other ridiculous claims I've seen. If this really happened, someone would release pictures. Instead, they're just full of crap.
I am sorry you have never lived on an ocean. If you had you would know that the local municipality probably pays to clean up garbage that people threw away, that day. It should never end up on a beach. Lots of happy well meaning people have no concept of what they are doing when they discard their trash on a beach. I figure you must be one of these people who think they are competent at everything, and cannot comprehend their lack of critical thinking skills.
Picking up the garbage, or sending Republicans to the bottom of the ocean?
I wonder if very many people realizes that plastics are made of hydrocarbons, not unlike fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel. And with the right furnace plastics will burn and produce energy quite nicely. If anyone can put together some automated way to collect lots of ocean trash in one spot, we can shovel it into an incinerator and push some steam turbines along. (yeah, collecting it all is the hard part. technical hurdle but not impossible)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This title is not politically correct. It should say: Remote Pacific Island Is the Most Plastic-Enriched Spot Yet Surveyed
End of story.
This sounds like the perfect location to set up a plastic recycling facility.
Isn't it amazing how all of this plastic gathers in remote, difficult to verify Pacific areas? Here on the Atlantic, which is almost continuously fringed by the largest plastic consuming nations from South Africa up to Norway and Canada down to Argentina, where everything is easily accessible and therefore verify, there's comparatively little plastic to be found. It's almost as if the ecomentalists make this shit up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rld0KDcan_w
Go back to your desk Anderson and readjust your butt plug.
I dunno I totally see a Family guy spin off on Cast Away ..
Scene #1: man washes up on deserted island, broken, dehydrated and forgotten
Scene n+1: man relaxes on hammock woven from canned soda pack rings gorging on canned tuna while he watches Gilligan's island on his reclaimed note S7. camara widens to distance shot showing miles of beach strewn with garbage and a 20 foot pile of fully charged and slightly charred note S7's
A typical gross conceptual error as to time frame. Synthetic plastics became ubiquitous in the 1930s. Plastics from natural sources were made in the 19th century. The first patent on a synthetic plastic, Bakalite, was issued in 1906.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/bakelite.html
NRRPT/RCT