We need a suitable green waste disposal services for our plants at home so that they will not go somewhere in our oceans. The relationship of the Oceans to Planet Earth is the same as Man’s lungs are to life. Just as our lungs purify our blood, the oceans absorb massive quantities of pollutants, not only from the air, but from the land as run-off from rainfall. And, just as, if Man’s lungs fail, death is imminent, so too will our Planet die if the oceans cease to perform their critical cleansing-action.
People who live far from the sea
may not realize how important those great bodies of water are to their
daily lives and that their garbage more often than not ends up traveling
to the sea. Even the multitudes who live at the beach or visit it
often, still tend to forget what an important “life-asset” the ocean is.
For all of us, climate change begins with the oceans; that’s where the
sun creates evaporation and generates humidity which leads to
life-giving rain everywhere which eventually returns to the sea.
Wind-blown
trash can travel miles on land but once it reaches the sea, tides and
currents may carry it thousands of miles to the natural ocean-vortex not
too far from Hawaii in the North Pacific. There, where the currents
converge and swirl, the floating trash cannot escape. At present, in
that location, there exists a buoyant, sub-surface “island” of
non-biodegradable, consumer-waste hundreds of miles in diameter.
Oceanographers call it The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
In the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean, to the east of Bermuda, is another vortex
area of similar size − The Sargasso Sea − which is also progressively
accumulating floating plastic waste. It’s estimated that combined, the
Sargasso Sea and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are currently choking
with more than two hundred million tons of plastic waste.
That’s 200,000,000 tons!
Even
though the plastic breaks down over time and eventually becomes
plankton-sized pieces, they retain their poisonous properties and
inevitably make their way into the food chain from which we humans eat.
Because those contaminants and poisons are ingested and absorbed by the
maritime creatures, they eventually pass it back to Man. As the oceans
become choked with inorganic waste and laced with polluting poisons, the
food-supply derived from the sea and consumed by Man, must dwindle and
eventually fail. Thousands of sea-creatures under and around both the
Garbage Patch and the Sargasso Sea, incapable of distinguishing between
“food” and the indigestible and poisonous bits of non-biodegradable
plastic, die there every year.
In all of the oceans and seas
around the world, sea-life, such as turtles, manta rays, whales,
dolphins and fish of all kinds are increasingly becoming victims of
plastic garbage from netting and beer six-pack carriers which strangle,
Styrofoam cups and plates, super-market bags, plastic wrap and soda
bottles that choke and poison.
Lung cancer in Man leads to death
and those massive Trash Islands are the tumors bought on by the “ocean
cancer” in our Planet. Each bottle you throw away, every little piece of
trash not disposed of correctly, contributes to the planetary
infirmity. We all need to become more conscious of our waste-disposal
habits and take corrective action.
Reduce, Re-use and Re-cycle !
Just
because most of us will never get to visit those vast and sluggish
whirlpools that are the Garbage Patch and the Sargasso Sea, or may never
even learn of their existence doesn’t mean that one day the problem
will simply go away. For millions of years, the Oceans have done an
amazing job of recycling the Earth’s bio-degradable waste, but in less
than two hundred years, Man’s mindless abuse has turned the Oceans into a
cesspool! The oceans cannot heal themselves against Man’s perpetual
onslaught of polluting waste.
Does anyone really believe that the oceans can “absorb” garbage endlessly?
Shouldn’t
such an important and valuable asset be treated with care and respect?
Or, is it because it’s free and so seemingly vast, we assume it can take
care of itself?
Planet Earth is in serious need of Emergency Room help!
While
a large proportion of beach trash floats in on a tide, at least half of
what’s collected from beaches is generated locally. And, thirty percent
of the locally generated trash is exclusively cigarette butts and
packets.
More than a hundred countries currently take part in a
campaign to remove floating garbage from lakes, rivers and beaches and
the trash collected weighs in at over 4,000 tons a month. How much more
sinks to the bottom or gets buried in transit?
Close inspection of
the garbage can pinpoint its country of origin. Might it be appropriate
to impose fines on the greatest polluters? It would certainly help to
have a mandatory “money-deposit” on all plastic containers. Even if a
soda bottle only earned a two cent refund there are millions of dollars
worth of them everywhere! And then there are detergent bottles, plastic
buckets, shopping bags, throw-away foam cups and containers, all of
which are carelessly disposed of and end up “somewhere” usually beyond
the litterer’s knowledge or concern.
Is “pollution” an individual
problem or a community one? Has it simply become another negative part
of our modern “culture”? Must we wait for government legislation to
impose fines or is this something Man can attend to personally?
Those
corporations who supply their products in one-trip bottles or in
throw-away packaging need to consider what those products and packaging
do to the environment. Shouldn’t they assume a large share of the
responsibility for the pollution problem that currently exists and
continues to worsen every day?
For the rest of us, let’s dispose
of our trash responsibly. Let’s help the environment by reducing our
personal demand for plastic throw-aways, re-use whatever we can and
re-cycle everything possible.
Reduce, Re-use and Re-cycle should be the motto everybody lives by as far as their personal trash is concerned.
Luigi Kleinsasser is a certified fitness instructor and diet counsellor specializing in weight loss and fitness programs. His concern is not just human health but the maintenance of the environment as it relates to Man’s survival on Planet Earth.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Luigi_Kleinsasser/455754
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