Floating on a Sea of Garbage

Following yesterday's post about under-reported environmental incidents, I decided that there was another story that has really been missed. It is a pollution event on a massive scale, and one we are likely all complicit in. The tragic events of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 allowed a very small pin prick of light to be shed on the fact that our seas are full of trash. Several large pieces of floating rubbish were mistaken for the missing aircraft that still has not been found.

News outlets understandably kept to the story of MH370. Despite some networks insistence on 24-hour speculation on nothing but the fate of the flight (I'm looking at you CNN), there was an opportunity to highlight the fact that a great deal of our daily garbage is making it into the world's oceans. Instead of ceaselessly covering the fact that nobody knew where the missing airliner was, news outlets had a chance to break up the monotony and teach their viewers about what happens when their (or a business') trash doesn't end up in the recycling plant or the landfill.

A few news outlets did decide to shed further light on the growing pollution problem with our oceans. The sad reality is that our oceans are heaving with garbage, rubbish, trash or whatever else you like to call it. A great deal of that waste is in the form of plastic. Because plastic typically floats and isn't bio-degradable, that is the face of ocean pollution. Recently, I saw a great Norwegian film about two young men living for several months above the Arctic Circle. They wanted to spend the time surfing on the waves as storms blew in. What they discovered is the amount of trash that daily washed up on the beach, and they made it their task to clean up the beach and keep it clean. All sorts of garbage washed up, and eventually they removed several tons of the stuff.

Garbage (plastic or otherwise) makes it into the ocean for a variety of reasons. A bottle left on the street gets washed into a storm drain on a coastal town and then follows the pipe out to sea. A trash barge carrying waste to a landfill loses some of its load as it moves through the water. It's little things, but they have massed into a very large problem and environmental issue. The harm our rubbish is doing to marine life and bird populations has been well-documented.

The good news is this is something we as consumers can limit now. Make sure you recycle what you can, and make sure it is contained properly. If you have a bottled drink you want to throw away while you are out and about, make sure it gets into the trash receptacle (look for the recycling containers in some cities). Don't just toss it and assume it made it in there. Better yet, take your bottle home with you and recycle it properly. If you see a plastic bottle or bag in the street, pick it up and throw it away in the proper manner. We have to take action if we want to unburden the seas from the islands of trash we have permitted to accumulate there. As with most environmental issues, the buck stops with the consumer. If we improve our habits, we make sure that ourselves and future generations get to enjoy all of the natural world.

Thanks Rolling Stone!

I have never, ever picked up a copy of Rolling Stone magazine or visited its website. After today, I just might have to keep my eye on this world famous media outlet. My friend and former colleague sent me a link to what his longtime girlfriend just had published to the online version of Rolling Stone. It covers some of the environmental disasters that have not enjoyed a great deal of coverage from the rest of mainstream media.

Now, if you are plugged into the environmental world, you may have heard these stories. I am familiar with 4 of the 5 stories the online article highlights. However, with perhaps the exception of the West, Texas chemical plant explosion, I think much of America has not really heard of these incidents. Worse yet, they don't get the opportunity to understand the significance of these pollution events because the 24 hour news cycle deems the story to be less important than it really is. The harsh reality is there are many environmental incidents that either don't get past the local news, or get scant coverage on the national/international news shows.

For example, how many Americans know of the oil spill that occurred in a Salt Lake City creek the same year that the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil spill became America's worst oil spill ever? Or how about this Bohai Sea oil spill that occurred off the coast of China the following year?  The fact of the matter is a lot of these incidents barely get mentioned in most news outlets. If you do hear about it, the research is usually left up to the individual to carry out if there is a desire to learn about the scope and scale of the incident.

Those of us who care about the environment must push back at the news outlets and demand they treat these incidents as real - and significant - stories. At a time when humans have never impacted the environment in a bigger way, we must hold the corporations that exploit the environment accountable. This is done by keeping the average citizen aware of what is going on and educating them on why a particular incident is such a bad thing. Unless we demand it, the corporations win the PR game, and we sadly find these news vignettes in Rolling Stone.