Sea of Consequences...

It's an Affair

2008-03-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

More and more data is coming out about this whole sordid plastics affair. Indeed, it IS an affair we're having with plastics- we love it more than we know, use it more than we care to admit, and throw it out the minute we're done with it, and hardly look back before we go on to the next piece. Check this out about plastics' absorption of pollutants in the oceans. Pollutants that last lifetimes are floating around too, we just can't see them. As soon as they find a little piece of something to hold onto, they do, and boy do they do. The link is a BBC article, the Brits are on it too.

Think Outside The Bottle

2008-02-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

Take the online pledge to choose tap water over bottled water..

April Pledge

2008-02-16T12:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, we each accidentally got us into this mess. That's the good news, it means we can each intentionally get us out. How? One pledge. A pledge that is written in mental stone. Just one. Just yours, that you follow through on, because a pledge is a promise and if you promise the Earth something, that's a promise you should keep. Big Earth, don't fib to Mother Nature.

So, examples for APRIL. That's all, let's start with one month- THAT we can all do. Let's do Earth Month because Earth Day seems awfully short, considering it's a whole planet we're honoring. End each of the following with "... in April."
1. I pledge NEVER to buy a plastic water bottle.
2. I pledge to bring my own tote bags EVERY TIME I go grocery shopping.
3. I pledge to bring my own mug for my soy latte caffeine fix.
4. I pledge to pick up at least 3 pieces of plastic every time I walk down the beach/sidewalk/park.
5. I pledge to NEVER accept a Styrofoam to-go container from a restaurant- I will ask for an alternative beforehand.
6. I pledge to write one letter to one company that I find ludicrously overpackages its products.

One month. Once your pledge becomes habit, I bet you'll never go back.
What's your pledge?

I Will Always Stoop Over For Our Earth

2008-01-30T12:36:00.000-08:00

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.

A Sisyphean Task?

2008-01-28T23:15:00.000-08:00

Sisyphus n
In Greek mythology, a cruel king of Corinth who was condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again just before it reached the top.

Sis·y·phe·an adj
Involving endless but futile labor

That's how this has felt lately. So much plastic being made every minute of every day of every year in so many cities in so many countries on so much of this sighing planet. How could I possibly think I could put even a chink into this monstrous polymer armor that has consumed nearly everyone of us? One hundred billion shopping bags used annually in the U.S. alone. I bought a thumbdrive, the size of a thumb, the rigid plastic package which required a machete to get into was the size of a large book. And in my tiny corner of the universe I tell a class of students that it would be great if they told their parents to bring their own shopping bags to the market. They nod in wild agreement, after seeing the photo of a sea turtle choking on a plastic bag. They promise, they will do their part. The bell rings, chaos ensues, books and papers fly and they flit out the door, "That was sad! Thanks for the presentation!" A Sisyphean task?

No, my friends tell me, don't underestimate the domino effect. And please, they say, don't stop. Each one who is impacted tells a friend, and so on. That's what grassroots activism is about. One at a time. One less piece of crap in the ocean at a time. Times it by 6.2 billion. Just another couple billion to go... why not.... what's more important, really? Not Sisyphean, just slow, slow and steady as she goes.

Below:
CFC levels decreasing because of the Montreal Protocol, because there's no more CFC's in aerosol cans and refrigerators. An example to show... the tide can be turned...

Get Your Bumper Sticker

2008-01-28T23:14:00.000-08:00

Here

Bag the Plastic - Go Tote

2008-01-14T16:25:00.000-08:00

Everyone's doing it, why can't we?
Some are taxes, some are bans, some are complex combo measures that address the issue as needed by the country or the town and its businesses. Whatever form the reduction takes, the ocean breathes a sigh of relief. Many more sighs to go, good news is:

The BIG ONE just joined! (The Biggest, can you guess?)
And on its heels comes the land down under.
Ireland imposed a smart 15 cent tax on bag, reducing plastic bag use by 90%.
In 2002 South Africa banned the ultra-thin plastic bags. The aim being that the thicker bags would be too expensive for retailers to give away freely. Bags are sold at 3 cents, plastic bag use has hence been cut by 50%.
In Paris, a plastic ban has just gone into effect, and a nationwide ban is slated for 01/2010.
Most German supermarkets voluntarily ask for b/w 5 and 25 cents per bag, they don't even need to be regulated into it, they just get it.
Read about more countries that have curbed their plastic bag usage through regulations or taxations or education or more likely a combination of all three. This listing includes histories, i.e. when a new law went into effect and what's the story today, e.g. Switzerland 2003 -> Switzerland 2007.

This photo from a 1955 Life magazine article called "Throwaway Living"

2008-01-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Check out the photo... makes you wanna go "WOOHOO!!" (though actually BOOHOO is more appropriate)
Seemed like a good idea at the time. Fewer dishes to wash. The 1950's, a post WWII time of phenomenal growth in this country, hand in hand with growth came the mass production of single-use disposable plastics. And why not-- just throw the junk away.

Problem with "throwaway" though, 50 years later- there is no more "away." Too many people and too much stuff. A friend of mine is a lighthouse keeper in Oregon. He often finds garbage on the beach with Japanese and Chinese lettering. It's a slow float away to the other side of the Pacific. There is probably someone now standing on the shores of Hokkaido, Japan wondering when the Frito's bag that just washed up was tossed from an American picnic.

Think about it - every plastic fork, knife, spoon, cup, plate and tray in this picture continues to exist, and will do so for the next... ohhhh.... 500-1,000 years. Teaching children to cross the street we say
"STOP, LOOK, & LISTEN."
We need to do similar - 1,000 years of floating around the ocean for a plastic knife to make a ham and mayo sandwich -
"STOP, THINK, & ENACT."

Here is the lowdown, the nutshell, the basics, the boiled down nuggets as I wrote them for the presentation. This is a handout essentially, yup.

The PLA Conundrum.

2008-01-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

This Smithsonian article details the polylactic acid (PLA) conundrum. Do we replace petrolem/chemical based plastics with much more benign corn based plastics? Sounds good on one level, but as with most things, dig a bit deeper to expose the hidden costs.

Transporting Potato Salad

2007-11-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

The moment two years ago that I saw the picture of a plastics-impacted belly of a dead albatross chick an internal switch flipped. I recall sitting in the audience with my jaw half dropped, grief and agitation slowly seeping from my core outwards. I pictured the sad way the bird must have died, slowly wilting from starvation, maybe with its parent watching in confusion and distress. I contemplated with quiet rage our collective human carelessness and ignorance- millions of pieces of garbage with a half-life of five centuries float out to sea, to the home of millions of marine organisms for whom our “throwaway” stuff is not “away.” I considered the overwhelming cultural and societal hurdles – how the hell do we walk away from the mind-numbing convenience of single-use disposable plastic packaging and disposable food and beverage containers to the fundamental sensibility of actually valuing and using and reusing natural materials again?

We have the phenomenon here of shifting baselines- the baseline for the last and current generation is that plastic is, well, normal. It’s not. A combination of petroleum byproducts and synthetic chemicals now house most of our food and drink. That’s an aberration of normal, or what should be normal and has been for thousands of years until now.

I was discussing this with an unconvinced neighbor recently, she was profoundly stumped, “Well then what am I supposed to get my potato salad in when I go to Safeway?” I gave her three answers: 1. Make your own potato salad (she wasn’t amused); 2. Bring your own container (she rolled her eyes and mumbled “yeah, right”); 3. Tell Safeway to use bio-plastics or Spudware and help get eco-friendly products into the mainstream. She asked, “But are they as good as regular plastic?” It was my turn to be stumped. I politely but somewhat exasperatedly came back with, “How strong of a container do you need to transport potato salad 8 minutes from the store to your house?” We were quiet for a moment, her eyes narrowed, and she narrowly yielded “I guess I’d never thought about it that way before… but still…” With the courteousness that neighbors do well to maintain, we gently moved on to the weather, then ambled apart towards our own homes. “But still…” lingered in my head, “but still what?” I thought. Would she be any more convinced if she saw the end result of our fixation with plastics? If she saw the pictures of the dead critters, read the oil consumption numbers, heard descriptions of the noxious chemicals seeping out of the plastics and into our food? When the time is right, I will invite her to a presentation, and I will describe her reaction here.

This is my first blog of a couple dozen or so I’ll be posting over the next year. I look forward to becoming A BLOGGER. I'm not one yet, but it's now integrated into my new calling. I will be writing about a project that I’ve recently embarked upon, one that is a direct result of attending the Marine Debris- Rivers to Sea conference in Redondo Beach, CA in 2005, where I saw that impactful albatross carcass photograph, and my switch flipped. I could not go on status quo, it seemed imperative that more people had to know, have to know. And so, co-supported by the Surfrider Foundation and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, I’ve put together a slide presentation about marine debris and I’m taking it on the road.

Project: In one year give at least 75 PowerPoint slide presentations about plastics in the oceans, discussing various issues as related to marine debris, including: the effects on sea life through ingestion and entanglement; health implications of toxic chemicals both absorbing into and leaching from plastics; petroleum based vs bio-plastics (e.g. corn, sugarcane, potato based); political and legislative hurdles; and finally- solutions and activism.
Audience: Classrooms in middle schools, high schools, colleges; community organizations; city councils; interested businesses; any group who’ll have me.
Location: Central California corridor-- a swath of communities from the coast of Monterey, into Salinas Valley, up through the ‘burbs of Sacramento and into the mountain towns around the High Sierra & Truckee. I’m going inland because 1) everything flows downstream, 2) visitors to the coast need to understand the end result of beach trash, 3) at some point all affect or will be affected by this burgeoning issue.
Goal: Educate. Advocate. Activate.

I welcome all feedback, questions, conundrums, suggestions, musings, etc. More to come, including links n pics n such n such (as I learn to use this thing). Thanks for reading, ride on, keep in touch and... BYO!
-X-