The Great Plastic Soup

Originally posted by twhitehead
Obviously we should deal with the source before trying to do the clean up. There is no point cleaning it up if it is growing faster than we can clean.

But I doubt the accuracy of the story. The figures appear to be based on one mans observations of trash floating by on one voyage he made.

The figure quoted as being from Unep of 46 000 pieces / squar ...[text shortened]... talking million of pieces / square mile in that region - probably several in every square foot.

I concur. Why no pictures? And you can bet MSNBC would have been all over this if true--Olberman would have put it at #1 on his countdown.

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
I concur. Why no pictures? And you can bet MSNBC would have been all over this if true--Olberman would have put it at #1 on his countdown.

There are pictures dude. Movies even. Check the thread again.
Knowing the size of certain landfills is this really so difficult to believe?

Originally posted by sonhouse
It's not a hoax. The problem is (for recycling purposes) the paucity of the stuff per square Km. You have to have a massively expensive ship with big scoops to pick up the stuff, which at the end of the day, would be far less than simply scrapping it off the ground at the city dump.

I was joking. A trick I learned from my old boss: if you want someone to pick up some rubbish, point at it and say you dropped some money in there. I fully understand how complicated it would be to recuperate all the good material here. Seeing that it is already complicated to separate plastics that are brought straight to a recycling plant. But this should prove that it is worth the while to get at it as early as possible.

This just shows again what a scourge the human race is on this god-forsaken piece of rock.

Originally posted by Crowley
This just shows again what a scourge the human race is on this god-forsaken piece of rock.

This piece of rock is the jewel of this part of the galaxy, it seems. Out of all the planets discovered, most of them are hell holes.

Originally posted by thyme
There are pictures dude. Movies even. Check the thread again.
Knowing the size of certain landfills is this really so difficult to believe?

I did something I never do--I went to those sites.{and THAT will NEVER happen again} I saw:
a photo of a lady holding a jar of muck, with a beautiful blue ocean behind her.
a poorly shot video of some individual artifacts, but no overhead shot showing a "mass the size of" anything! Just the stuff one might find cleaning out an attic or a storage room.
lots of words "claiming" that someone had 'x' number of trawls and marine life that ingested plastic. The video is so poorly done I can't verify that the nartine life is an animal, a balloon creature, of a magnified fishing lure.

When I see it on National Geographic or the Discovery Channel, I'll take it more seriously.

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
When I see it on National Geographic or the Discovery Channel, I'll take it more seriously.

"I'll only take pollution seriously once it's been repackaged as entertainment."

Originally posted by sonhouse
This piece of rock is the jewel of this part of the galaxy, it seems. Out of all the planets discovered, most of them are hell holes.

Do these other hell-holes have racist killing sprees, kids walking into high schools and shooting bullies with semi-automatic weapons, Dubya with his finger on nuclear weapons, mustard gas, suicide bombers, serial killers and rapists, Sandra Bullock and a huge pile of crap drifting in an ocean?

No? I didn't think so.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
"I'll only take pollution seriously once it's been repackaged as entertainment."

If it's not on CNN Live, it didn't happen 😞

Originally posted by Crowley
Do these other hell-holes have racist killing sprees, kids walking into high schools and shooting bullies with semi-automatic weapons, Dubya with his finger on nuclear weapons, mustard gas, suicide bombers, serial killers and rapists, Sandra Bullock and a huge pile of crap drifting in an ocean?

No? I didn't think so.

The part about shooting bullies somehow does not fill me with disgust as much as the other examples you cite.

Ideas:

1. We pour a large amount of solvent in that spot and dissolve the whole lot of plastic. Acetone should do most nicely.

2. Throw some kerosene on it and burn it all up.

3. Bomb it and erase any trace of evidence of our materialistic lifestyle.

Take your pick!

🙂🙂

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
The part about shooting bullies somehow does not fill me with disgust as much as the other examples you cite.

Always the comedian. Anyway, I was making reference to our planet as a jewel because it has such verdant life and all the conditions for life for billions of years. Look around even our solar system. You see anything like that? The planets which have been sussed out of the data have shown themselves to be mostly jupiter sized things a few million miles from its sun. So I think it easy to say our planet is the jewel of this part of the galaxy, humans or not.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Always the comedian. Anyway, I was making reference to our planet as a jewel because it has such verdant life and all the conditions for life for billions of years. Look around even our solar system. You see anything like that? The planets which have been sussed out of the data have shown themselves to be mostly jupiter sized things a few million miles from ...[text shortened]... un. So I think it easy to say our planet is the jewel of this part of the galaxy, humans or not.

I wasn't joking.

That's why I didn't disagree with your premise. Our planet IS beautiful. Lush and green, foaming blue oceans---if not for those bullying bags of pus walking around on it, it would be an Eden.

Originally posted by PinkFloyd
I wasn't joking.

That's why I didn't disagree with your premise. Our planet IS beautiful. Lush and green, foaming blue oceans---if not for those bullying bags of pus walking around on it, it would be an Eden.

On to bigger and better things: Here is a link to these people, looks like maybe a dozen or so, on a beach somewhere, seeing how much plastic garbage they can pick up by hand in just thirty minutes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7318630.stm

There is some kind of bird, (nesting?) in the video seems to be watching it all quite bemused it looks like!

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
"A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris - in effect the world's largest rubbish dump - is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 ...[text shortened]... =143&art_id=vn20080210085415175C340800

Any bright ideas for cleaning this sucker up?

when all the fish are dead (either killed by the plastic bags and/or the fishing nets), get the useless fishing boats to catch plastic bags and feed a giant recycling boat in it's centre.