Environmental Defense: Climate 411

Let me take just a few minutes of your time to touch on some subjects that have been preying on my mind, like Drinking Water in Plastic Bottles and Eating Fish for Health, just to mention a couple, because that's basically what the majority of the population does. On the Environmental Defense Fund (.org) website you can really learn something regarding drinking water. The article states that: "It's ironic! In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big bucks for it, too - over $15 billion a year. Worse of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming..." When I walk around Lake Irma, I can see all the litter in the water comprised of styrofoam cups, aluminum cans and plastic drinking water bottles. I wonder if all that plastic offsets the supposed health benefits of drinking bottled water? (and we all should know by now how dangerous plastics are.) Feel free to read more below: Bottles, Bottles, Everywhere... In his article, R. Hoskins writes, PLASTIC: The most important thing to understand is that there is no such thing as "away" when it comes to plastics. When people say "Oh, just throw it away", where precisely is "away"? Just because it's no longer in our home, in our work place or in our car does not mean its "away." It just means we no longer have to look at it on a daily basis and it's somewhere else on this planet. Out of sight out of mind, and not our problem! Well, remember we've only had plastic since the 1950's and it is anticipated that it lasts for at least 400 years, a lot of scientists now estimate that age at more like 1000. Meaning it's all still here, and this amount is growing at an alarming rate. Fifteen billion pounds (7 billion kilograms) of plastic are produced annually in the U.S., but only 1 billion pounds (.5 billion kilograms) are recycled, according to Adventure Ecology. A lot of the bottles that aren't re-purposed end up floating out to sea. The Great Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, where ocean currents shepherd much of this debris, is twice the size of Texas. It is difficult to estimate how many sea animals die annually from plastics, but it is estimated that approximately 30,000 marine animals lose their lives from plastics annually. The Albatross seems especially hard hit, as is evidenced in a video on this website: Plastic Facts Page I was unable to embed the actual video here, so I'm giving you this link to an eight minute jaw dropping, eye popping talk explaining how our mass consumption and "Throwaway Living" impacts our world. You will be amazed: Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic (click here) I know how many people love to eat fish, but as of late, I have drastically reduced my consumption of fish for obvious reasons: Mercury and PCBs. For your perusal, here's a Seafood Selector to find some ECO-best fish to eat: Find a Fish This is probably the most I have written on my blog thus far, but I feel very strongly about working together to help save our planet and it's inhabitants, and that includes us. All we have to do is make small changes on a daily basis, be a little more aware, maybe use a little less, don't litter in nature and find ways to recycle or upcycle to keep stuff out of the landfills a little longer...you know, baby steps! ...and if Dr. Seuss were still alive today, he'd say the four words we all dread to hear: "I told you so!" and point to the words in his book called The Lorax, where he wrote: “UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” (Excerpts from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss)