A piece of plastic scooped from the North Atlantic Ocean. It shows the tell-tale bite marks of a fish. A new study estimates how much plastic floats throughout the world’s oceans — trash that puts many marine creatures at risk.
The researchers found that more than half of the weight of all ocean plastics is made up of such tiny pieces. This discovery concerned the team because smaller particles have a greater surface area. This allows them to absorb more pollution per unit weight than larger pieces will.
via Plastics at sea create raft of problems | Science News for Students.
Michael Stewart, co-founder of Sustainable Surf (a San Francisco nonprofit), discovered this sad reality over years of participating in California beach clean ups. Tired of seeing this type of plastic trash in and around the ocean, Stewart and Sustainable Surf’s other co-founder Kevin Whilden started the Waste to Waves program, which aims to recycle styrofoam packaging back into new products — most notably, surfboards.
via Waste To Waves Recycling Program Gives Foam A Second, Ocean-Friendlier Life.
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It’s our mission to clean up the ocean and planet by ensuring that anyone can collect enough plastics to permanently ascend from poverty.
The Plastic Bank is a plastics return, repurposing, and 3D printing center strategically located in areas around the world with both an abundance of plastic waste & poverty.
Our self-sustaining business model empowers the poor to harvest plastics as a currency for various opportunities including education, training, necessities and 3D printing services.
We call the plastics harvested by the poor or removed from our oceans & waterways ‘social plastics’ and it is our goal to lead the movement towards the worldwide demand for the use of social plastics in everyday products. The higher the worldwide demand becomes, the higher the reward will be for harvesting social plastics.
via Reducing Waste Plastic & Poverty Around the World Through The Plastic Bank – YouTube.
In total, the researchers counted over 1,500 observations of deep-sea debris, at dive sites from Vancouver Island to the Gulf of California, and as far west as the Hawaiian Islands. In the recent paper, the researchers focused on seafloor debris in and around Monterey Bay—an area in which MBARI conducts over 200 research dives a year. In this region alone, the researchers noted over 1,150 pieces of debris on the seafloor. (source)
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via Researchers study 18,000 hours of deep sea footage, find ocean seafloor is covered in trash : TreeHugger.
Reclamation Administration: News and Research on Building Material Waste Prevention