Just when the debate over water is rising and the earth is warming is slowing down the UN finds us another topic to discuss.

Ocean trash problem 'far from being solved,' U.N. says

By John D. Sutter
CNN

(CNN) -- The world's oceans are full of trash, causing "tremendous" negative impacts on coastal life and ecology, according to a U.N. report released Monday.


Trash clutters the world's oceans, as shown here near Hong Kong.

The oceans will continue to fill up with junk discarded from cities and boats without urgent action to address this buildup of marine debris, the United Nations Environment Programme says in a report titled "Marine Litter: A Global Challenge."

Current efforts to address the problem are not working, and the issue is "far from being solved," the report says.

"There is an increasingly urgent need to approach the issue of marine litter through better enforcement of laws and regulations, expanded outreach and educational campaigns, and the employment of strong economic instruments and incentives," the report says.

"Although a number of countries have taken steps at the national level to deal with marine litter, the overall situation is not improving."

Scientists have been watching trash pile up in the world's oceans for about a half-century, when plastics came into widespread use. Since plastics don't biodegrade, or do so very slowly, the trash tends to remain in the ocean, where circling currents collect the material in several marine "garbage patches." See a map of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch »

One of these trashy areas is said to be roughly the size of Texas. The water in these at-sea landfills is thick like a plastic soup, oceanographers told CNN.

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The trash patches are located in "very remote parts of the ocean where hardly anyone goes, except the occasional research vessel," said Peter Niiler, a distinguished researcher and oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Plastics and cigarette butts are the most common types of ocean litter, with plastic making up about 80 percent of the ocean trash collected in some areas of the world, a U.N. news release says.

The ocean litter is a problem for coastal communities, which rely on clean beaches for tourism dollars and to boost quality of life for their residents, the report says. Ocean trash also affects marine life and degrades human health.

Sea turtles, for example, think plastic grocery bags are jellyfish when the bags are floating in the ocean. An untold number of the turtles and other creatures, such as Hawaii's endangered monk seal, swallow the bags and suffocate, drown or starve, said Holly Bamford, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine debris program.
.....................Much More Here........................
Ocean trash problem 'far from being solved,' U.N. says - CNN.com

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Global warming has diverted attention away from a number of other very real environmental problems... Not to say that global warming and reducing our CO2 (even if for no other reason than the effect of changing our atmospheric composition) isn't an important issue, I believe it is... unfortunately, most environmentalists now think it is the ONLY issue - it isn't.

Do you use cloth diapers to prevent landfills from filling up with disposables? Or do you use disposables, which pollute landfills but contribute a smaller carbon footprint?

What about burning wood for heat, woodstoves in homes, it's a closed carbon cycle, the fuel is 40 years old on average, not 60 million - but it pollutes our air.

I remember in middle and high school, global warming was an identified issue, but rarely talked about, the issue of the time that took up all the eco-media attention... landfills. Nobody talks about landfills anymore, except an occassional mention of a landfill being used to generate electricity from the excess methane... nobody talks about landfills now because they are out of sight, out of mind, and global warming has taken center stage.

Today's landfills are much cleaner than those of 20 years ago, buried by a layer of soil nightly, hidden by burms, located away from population centers, leachate collection systems that prevent contaminants from getting into groundwater, methane vented off and burned or used to produce heat or electricity... but they are still filling up at the same, if not a faster rate, than they did when they were the hottest environmental issue.

Logging, we "eliminated" the problem by driving it to the rainforests... now the rainforests are dissapearing.

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"Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous."
-William Proxmire



“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

No diapers or buring wood here. I quit using bottled water and use tap for my medications.
I'll have to take your word on the landfills. The only one 2 I recall was in the 50's San Diego or S.F., California, it smelled and sea gulls were all over the place. The other was 1986 in Ketchican, Alaska Blad Eagles were swarming over the place so I went there. Not much had changed between the two.

Mankind is going to piss off mother nature with the rainforests depletion going on around the planet.

__________________
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson.. (1709 - 1784) Faith is what mine is built upon..

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)