Hello, wonderful readers and friends? Yesterday I shared with you some beautiful photos that I took at the beach during sunrise. However, behind those beautiful photos hides an ugly truth that was washed ashore by the high tide the previous night.
GARBAGE! To be more specific, plastic Garbage.
This is not my first attempt to write about this subject. I wrote about it before in Bitlanders. (How Great is the Pacific Garbage Patch?).
I tried to write everything from scratch more than a month ago, but I could not gather my thoughts on this subject. However, when I saw that old lady picking up the man-made debris mixed up with seaweeds and other natural wastes, I thought I should write about it again.
Benefits of Plastics
I can't deny that plastic is useful. We drink from plastic bottles and tumblers. We carry food in it. Store our clothes and other things in it, and among other things.
A plastic container is relatively more durable and safer than a glass container. A plastic tumbler won't explode into pieces when you accidentally drop it. They are also cheaper to produce.
What Do We Do After We Use Them?
This is the biggest question. What do we do with all the plastics after we use them? Or when they eventually break or get damaged? Perhaps some are recycled. But do you know that there are some types of plastics that can't be recycled?
The sad thing though is, we easily discard plastics carelessly. Especially the small ones. Candy wrappers, plastic straws, sandwich bags, plastic bags, broken toys, etc...
And Where Do all the Plastic Garbage Go?
If the plastic trash is properly disposed of, it might end up in the recycling facilities in which will be used to create something new. Monoblock chairs and tables, plastic toys, plastic utensils. I'm not sure if they do make plastic spoons and forks out of recycled plastic. But it is possible.
Some will find their way into the sanitary landfills. Where some of them might be picked up by scavengers and sold to recycling centers.
But much of the plastic garbage will find its way to the waterways. Then the rivers will throw them into the ocean. What happens then? The pieces of garbage washed on the shores of our beaches are just a small portion.
Take a look at this video from 60 Minutes.
Then do you know what happens? Here is another video from 60 minutes to answer that.
So next time you carelessly throw that piece of plastic away? You could be killing a bird or a fish. But do you know what could happen if fish would eat the plastics? Chances are, the fishermen will catch those fishes that ate some plastic, and they would end up at our dining table.
What can we do?
@bbghitte have always shared this in noisecash. When they go to the beach, they bring a garbage bag with them and pick up some plastic litter on the beach.
There are some other ways we can help to cut down the amount of garbage that ends up in the ocean. While we can't totally stop using plastics, we can minimize our use of single-use plastics. Like straws, plastic utensils. There is one fast-food chain here that serves plastic utensils even before the pandemic. I stopped going to that fast-food chain.
Whenever I buy meals for take-out, I always remind the crew not to put any plastic utensils. I know the effect of my action is minimal. But if thousands or tens of thousands of people around the globe would follow, that's ten thousand pieces of plastic straws less per day that goes to the great pacific garbage patch.
In Closing
No matter how little, we can do our part to reduce the garbage. The accumulated effect would be significant. The beach is not made of a single speck of sand.
Before I close, I would like to share with you an interactive ChatBlog that I made to present this long ago.
https://www.querlo.com/chat/8075
Thanks for reading.
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All content is mine unless otherwise indicated
It is a pet peeve of mine, whenever I goto the beach or the park, I take a bag to collect the plastic rubbish and put what can be recycled into recycling. Unfortunately, as you say John not all can be recycled. I also try to do my part and for example, I only use takeaway restaurants that use recyclable cartons.