A surprisingly pleasant song about plastic pollution If you’re like the Amazing Mr. Smashing, you’re probably singing and chucking water bottles at sea otters. If so, why don’t you kick some puppies while you’re at it? If not, phew — you’re off the hook. Or not. The video, by illustrator Edward Ward, was produced by Seas at Risk, a Brussels-based group fighting the good fight against ocean trash. Nice work, Europe. Pharrell is making jeans out of recycled ocean plastic Here’s some news to make you happy: Pharrell Williams not only makes catchy, sunny jams, but he’s trying to do something good with all the plastic junk in the Pacific. The musician and fashion designer announced at New York Fashion Week that he’s partnering with designer denim label G-Star RAW to create jeans out of ocean waste. And it’s not just gloriously tacky back-pocket bedazzling; the plastic is incorporated into the jeans as part of the core of each denim strand. Check out Williams’ promo video, which is light on the details but heavy on cute octopuses: The collection, G-Star RAW for the Oceans, will be available in mid-August.
Pollution : du plastique disparaît mystérieusement de la surface des océans Une nouvelle étude a mis au jour une nouvelle surprenante. 10.000 à 35.000 tonnes de débris de plastiques flotteraient actuellement à la surface des océans. Soit bien moins que ce les chercheurs pensaient trouver, suggérant ainsi qu'une partie d'entre eux disparaîtrait… Avez-vous déjà partagé cet article? Partager sur Facebook Partager sur Twitter Le septième continent, ça vous parle ? Un problème de taille Andrés Cozar et ses collègues du Centre Supérieur de la Recherche Scientifique, en Espagne, ont voulu en savoir plus sur cet inquiétant phénomène du plastique : les courants marins transportent les matériaux abandonnés vers différentes régions subtropicales, créant de véritables continents. Pour comprendre l'étendue du problème, les chercheurs ont parcouru le globe à bord du Malaspina, en 2010, collectant des échantillons à la surface de l'eau et mesurant les concentrations en plastique. Micro-particules ou voyage en profondeur ? Comment ? Impact inconnu
Pharmacie, épicerie, Franprix : pourquoi nous filent-ils encore des sacs plastique ? « Non, je n’ai pas besoin de sac, merci. » Vous avez arrêté de compter le nombre de fois où vous prononcez cette phrase. Vous prenez votre mal en patience, pensant secrètement « vivement que ces sacs jetables soient interdits ». En 2010, la France s’est engagée à les taxer, afin d’aboutir à l’« éradication » (sic) du milliard de sacs plastique jetables distribués en France. Eradication à retardement, toutefois, puisque cette taxe de 6 centimes d’euros par sac devait entrer en vigueur ce 1er janvier 2014. Quatre ans plus tard, le jour J est enfin arrivé. « La loi est bien entrée en vigueur, mais les décrets d’application n’ont toujours pas été publiés, explique Delphine Lévi Alvarès, chargée de campagne du Cniid (Centre national d’information indépendante sur les déchets). Les enseignes qui « offrent » encore des sacs plastique à leurs clients pourront donc se contenter de changer de fournisseurs mais pas de pratiques. Un remède pire que le mal
Des déchets qui polluent l'océan pacifique, faire une île recyclée Un atoll, des cocotiers, du sable blanc, chaud et fin… Voilà ce qui vient à l’esprit lorsque l’on évoque des « îles du Pacifique ». Bientôt, une autre image, moins bucolique, apparaîtra peut-être tout aussi spontanément : celle de montagnes de déchets plastiques flottant sur le bleu de l’océan. Dans le Pacifique Nord, entre le Japon et la côte ouest des Etats-Unis, se trouve un vortex – un gigantesque courant marin tourbillonnaire – qui attire et emprisonne les déchets dans son flux. « Il s’étend sur une superficie équivalant à celle de l’Europe, explique François Galgani, chercheur à l’Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (Ifremer). Pour lutter contre cette pollution qui menace l’écosystème des océans et valoriser ces détritus que personne ne prend la peine de collecter, WHIM, une agence d’architecture de Rotterdam, propose de les transformer en… une île artificielle. Et pour mener le projet à bien, ce n’est pas la matière première qui manque.
8 things you should know about plastic in the ocean When you hear the words “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” chances are you’re picturing a thick, floating isle of mucked-up rubber duckies and soda rings and tractor tires jutting from the deep blue ocean like some dystopian fjord. Er, at least, I was. But it’s not one humongous island or solid “patch,” really, at all. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is more like a loose collection of tiny plastic bits scattered throughout the North Pacific Gyre, a slow-moving whirlpool that, thanks to ocean currents and the Earth’s rotation, sucks up marine debris. Turns out, when it comes to plastic gunk in the ocean, there’s a sea of misconceptions and unresolved research. Here’s what you need to know about plastic in the ocean: 1. Relax: Our oceans aren’t uniformly made of plastic soup. 2. “You can read varying accounts of the problem and how big it is and how scary it is,” says Sea Education Association principal investigator Kara Lavender Law. 3. 4. … Even ones hyped at TED conferences. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Look who’s eating your plastic now: A whole unprecedented ecosystem We already knew that barnacles, lanternfish, and whales have been gobbling up plastic. It turns out that the problem is even bigger than we thought — because it is much, much smaller. Welcome to the “plastisphere,” the tiny plastic-based ecosystem developing within the world’s oceans. The alien-sounding title is fitting, as scientists have found more than 1,000 species of microbes living there, some of which still have not been identified. The group of organisms supported by the plastic was significantly different from, and much more diverse than, other microbial communities in the ocean, suggesting that the plastic particles are providing a haven for microbes that otherwise might not survive, or even arise in the first place. The study, done by a team in Woods Hole, Mass., took a high-resolution look at plastic particles between 1 and 5 millimeters in size (I believe the unscientific term is “itty bitty specks”).
Your plastic garbage is killing whales Whales are eating plastic trash, dying, and washing ashore. It happened this summer in the Netherlands (technically the whale got stranded and THEN died); it happened this spring in Spain. Here are the guilt-inducing, gory details of the latter: Most of this plastic consisted of transparent sheeting used to build greenhouses in Almeria and Grenada for the purpose of tomatoes for the European market. A WORLD OF UGH. This also happened closer to home — as in, close to Grist’s home in Seattle — three years ago: In April 2010, a gray whale that died after stranding itself on a west Seattle beach was found to have more than 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, plastic pieces, duct tape, a pair of sweat pants, and a golf ball, not to mention other garbage contained in its stomach. Clearly it’s time to ban sweatpants.
Barnacles are accidentally eating our plastic trash Barnacles in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are attaching themselves to trash and eating little plastic particles. Researchers don’t yet know the implications of these findings, but it’s a safe bet that they’re not good. American scientists inspected the gastrointestinal tracts of 385 gooseneck barnacles collected from the garbage patch, aka the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and found microplastic in a third of them. Some specimens had a single piece of plastic in their stomach, while others had gobbled down as many as 30. Miriam Goldstein of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography described her research in the blog Deep Sea News: Gooseneck barnacles look kind of freaky. The barnacles are eaten by crabs, nudibranchs, and other marine creatures that are hunted, in turn, by birds, fish, and dolphins. As Goldstein says, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to learn that barnacles are eating the ubiquitous plastic waste. Here’s what some of the plastic barnacle food looked like.
Europe’s plastic bag rule is a breath of fresh air Plastic bags are the worst. They’re made of oil, they’re filling up the oceans, they’re showing up in sea turtles, they’re killing birds and plankton, too, and they’re even threatening human health, as plastic works its way up the food chain to the top predator: us. That’s why the European Union worked so hard on a new compromise aimed at cutting Europe’s throwaway plastic bag use by 80 percent over the next decade. E.U. governments unanimously approved the measure last Friday, reports Newsweek. Yes, that’s right. Political actors from states like Denmark, where folks use four lightweight plastic bags per year, on average, found a happy medium with the likes of Portugal, whose residents go through them at 100 times that rate, and all sides agreed to the deal because the ecological damage is too great to ignore. What to do about this oceanic mess? Celebrate the progress, but beware of complacency.
Here’s all the plastic in the ocean, measured in whales Let’s see how closely you know your marine doom-and-gloom: Just how much plastic can be found in the oceans? A) A lot. B) A whole helluva lot. C) Both A and B. D) All of the above. While those answers are all FINE, now we can get a little more specific thanks to a study by the 5 Gyres institute. This was actually less plastic than the researchers expected to find at the surface, but they suspect the missing plastic is likely being eaten by organisms, or otherwise mulched by the gyres, and sinking deeper into the oceans.
Sailing Seas of Plastic - Interactive Data Visualisation About the Study M. Eriksen, L.C.M. Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Using an oceanographic model of debris dispersal calibrated by our data, and correcting for wind-driven vertical mixing, we estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons. Read the publication