A Sea of Plastic - What can we do???

[Michael C. Page]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8534052.stm

[Merlyn]

We have to clean it up, is what we have to do.
I took a quick search on bottled water alone, and the numbers are staggering.
Plastic is used for disposable containers a whole lot.

We can get a nice drinking horn, like I have, and take it with you. It does just a bit of good to say no thanks to the plastic cup.

http://www.jelldragon.com/drinking_horns.htm

They are just kool

rt_small_drinking_horns_t.jpg (10.56 KiB) Viewed 515 times

[Aylyn]

It is just so hard to avoid plastic nowadays. I always refuse plastic bags in the supermarket, as I have a carrier box, and usually get a look that says "Crazy". They are just so ubiquitous here... A friend of mine saw my wicker basket the other day and said "This is so German"

Plastic is used so unthinkingly, that it might be very hard to change the habit.

[katie bridgewater]

What can we do??? Clean it up and stop buying / using plastic where there is an alternative. If you have ever helped with a beach clean up then you would immediately stop buying cotton buds (the plasic sticks are EVERYWHERE), switch from tampax (plastic applicators - why exactly?) to a mooncup (£17 and lasts for years) or similar and buy a reuseable metal drinking bottle (from an outdoor shop) and fill it with tap water and never buy another evian (tastes of plastic to me anyway) again. There are alternatives for many things, if you shop around. Raw plastic is transported in the form of tiny balls by ship around to manufacturers and the stomachs of sea creatures and birds are full of these little beads. Why? Because we all buy plastic crap to chuck in landfills. Duh...

Oh, and as for drinking horns good idea Merlyn, but since we make and sell them too, you could even get them more cheaply and from Druidy people you know (and we make them ourselves, rather than have them polished by labourers in Pakistan)! We usually have them on our stall at Pagan events in the UK and we supply mail order nationally and internationally to people who have found it difficult to obtain them locally.
http://www.ancientmusic.co.uk/kornukopia/index.html

[Aylyn]

Sure there is a lot of things we can do, but it is so difficult to change the habits of the majority. I am still surprised that plastic bags are free in the supermarkets here, and that there is none of the reusable bottles we have in Germany - it is all one way, and even if it gets recycled, it is not as good as reused. So how do we change it in a big way?

[Merlyn]

After moving to a farm from the suburbs a lot come to light.
The water here is drinkable, in the suburbs it is so bad it even kills plants to water them. Awful amounts of chlorine are dumped into the water supply in cities and suburbs. I agree, that to buy your drinking horn from a fellow druid is the best, as mine was artfully carved. The web site is only one of many.

What can be done in the big picture?
Recycling requires incentive in the overly capitalist world. Remember picking up soda bottles and cashing them in for 5 cents each?
A system of this kind could help. Say a dollar for every pound of plastic? It does a few good things. It gets the trash recycled and it gives a whole new light to trash.

But we could do more. If we recycle, the amount of trash we actually need to dispose of becomes compost, and the rest is reused.
So what do you do about plastic bags? I agree this has become an issue. Cutting down trees for bags is bad. But at least they decompose.
It is a problem. The Bloom grocery store sells grocery sacks, and also gives you good sturdy reusable paper sacks for free. This kind of system encourages us to get away from disposable plastic bags. Those disposable plastic bags are awful anyway, never holding the groceries right.

Clean up of the ocean is a matter of a larger scale responsibility. Getting people to stop throwing trash overboard ...

This should not be a problem, but it is. Tossing trash from the beaches is also an issue.

Merlyn

[katie bridgewater]

Clean up of the ocean is a matter of a larger scale responsibility. Getting people to stop throwing trash overboard ...

This should not be a problem, but it is. Tossing trash from the beaches is also an issue.

Merlyn

Merlyn, the debris on beaches that I am talking about is not from 'tossing trash overboard' or from littering on the beach. In even the most remote places (I have cleared beaches on a small private island inhabited by just 6 people off the coast of Scotland). It is pumped out into the sea worldwide through our sewage systems and water infrastructures, and goods and raw plastic washed overboard from container ships. I am not talking about a few lolly sticks, but tonnes of plastic worn by it's long journeys on ocean currents.

I don't have a large scale answer, I pretty much despair of any corporate or governmental solution. As I see it, it is down to 7 billion individuals to make up their own minds. It's unlikely that that will happen. Every time an individual buys a plastic bottle of shampoo, a ball point pen, a pair of vegan shoes, or buy shares in a company that sells consumer plastic goods, they make a decision not to make a difference to the amount of plastic that ultimately ends up in landfill. Even a plastic bottle recycled as a polar fleece jumper will end up in the same place. Recycling only puts off the moment when something becomes trash... How do you get people to change their minds? I have no idea - even on this board I have been criticised for daring to suggest that it is the sum of individuals making brave and unfashionable choices that add up to the change.

[Merlyn]

Trash-gate is an interesting thing, dating back longer and having a larger affect than we know.
Here is what my mom did long ago.
She used the local kids to gather all the trash from just the town main street and we all built a large monster, which the hardware store allowed us to put right in the middle of town.
On this monster she put a sign "Don't let this monster grow".

That was 40 years ago.

Now it's an international problem. And like climate-gate, no one government can solve it.
This is perhaps the most perplexing thing.

Merlyn

[Kernos]

Gengineer bacteria to turn plastic back into oil and then pump it back into the ground for future generations to pump and burn keeping their own earth warm and toastie.

[Aylyn]

This might be the solution:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8531170.stm

Otherwise, I agree with Katie: It should be reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order, and if we don't need those things, they should not be produced in the first place. If every person in the supermarket refuses to use plastic bags, they would be a thing of the past within a year. But to change that mindset is very hard to do, especially as I usually get the answer: "What difference does it make when I do not use plastic bags?" Well, one person does not make much of a difference, 60 million will.... It is just hard to get that image across

[Merlyn]

Remember when the milk man used to take his empty bottles and leave fresh milk at the door?

Or picking up soda bottles and getting some change to buy an ice-cream?

Parents used to save for their kids college education? Actually pay off their home? Raised money for the poor at church?
Donated coats and shoes?

I am too old
Makes me sad sometimes.