SOURCES & RESOURCES

Hi folks- welcome to my blog. It's less bloggy than most, it's more of a tool for looking up information on PLASTICS, especially as related to marine debris. Plastics have become a big problem for the planet because there is SO MUCH of it and it doesn't go away... ever. Over time it gets brittle and breaks apart into smaller and smaller pieces, but the strong synthetic plastic polymers continue to exist. The oceans are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon because the cold water and lack of bacteria make it even more difficult for breakdown to occur.
Maybe by now you have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area roughly 2 times the size of Texas in the middle of the N Pacific Subtropical Gyre which is becoming a plastic soup. It's a sad state of affairs, but fixable in that all we have to do, I mean ALLLLLL of us, is be more sensible in our habits and consumer choices. Bring Your Own Bags to the grocery store; Bring Your Own Mug to the cafe; choose less packaged products when possible. It's doable, for a worthwhile cause...
Poke around below to find out more.

Nurdles (pre-production plastic pellets)

Nurdles (pre-production plastic pellets)
Manufacturers need to be responsible for cleaning up their own spills

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

I Will Always Stoop Over For Our Earth

THIS MAKES IT ALL WORTHWHILE...

Hello,
My name is Tony Calcagno and I work for the Ledyard Co. in Santa Cruz. We had a meeting at our office on Friday January 11th with a woman I can't remember her name but I know it starts with an X. We discussed Biodegradable to go containers for the restaurant industry and how Styrofoam and plastics are disrupting our marine life and our earth. So, after a three hour bike ride with my friend, my wife and I went down to " Beer Can Beach " below Seascape Resort where we take our dog for a walk. I was telling her about this distressing situation about plastics and how they hang around for at least 500 years, so we begin picking up plastic water bottle tops! I can't believe what we picked up!

We walked along the high tide line on the beach and by the time we got to the Resort area we had a two gallon zip lock bag full of plastic bottle tops, children's plastic toys, plastic sauce cups, shotgun shell wads! What an eye opener! I have lived in Santa Cruz County all my life and have used the beach and ocean and had no idea how bad this really is. I want to thank the lady, sorry I don't remember her name, but my question is what do I do with this bag full of plastic lids? I brought them home and want to do the right thing with them. I don't want to put them in my garbage can. I can't imagine what it must be like in the Northwest Pacific gyre. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will always stoop over for our earth.
Tony Calcagno, DSR
Ledyard Co.

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