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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI have no words...
Nothing I say about this can sufficiently convey my horror...
Jeff Corwin - The power of plastic! This turtle likely crawled through a discarded plastic ring of a 6-pack of beer or soda when it was a baby, and now is being forever strangled in a plastic hangman's noose! Share this if you are not OK with it. #jeffcorwin #recycle
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=757174207647351&set=a.668411726523600.1073741827.116687691696009&type=1&theater
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)what have we done?
yes, WE
liberal N proud
(60,339 posts)But I try to avoid buying anything with those damn rings in the first place.
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)Omaha Steve
(99,693 posts)I hope everybody gets the message.
Edit: Marta and I used to have a huge tank with over 20 assorted turtles when the kids were little back in the mid 80's.
K&R!
City Lights
(25,171 posts)liberalhistorian
(20,819 posts)was horrified, dismayed and ashamed. Not just at this poor turtle, but at the fact that this is surely not the only case, that there are many, many more cases like this. I know that marine life has suffered like this for a long time, there are instances of dolphins and others being entangled in this shit and unable to get free. Sad thing is that too many people don't give a damn and don't think about how their "convenience" affects others, both humans and animals and the planet itself.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)I got the message way beck when I was a little kid. Always had pet turtles...some places sold baby turtles with designs painted on their shells. I learned that the paint interfered with the growth of their shells, so I went on a mission to inform.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)in use by some companies and though this particular incident is decades-removed from the present, the danger is still very real as those plastic rings are still in the environment.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)Humans are systematically destroying all life on earth, including our own.
Inkfreak
(1,695 posts)I break them up if we have any. But these days most of our drinks come in boxes or fully wrapped in plastic.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)some companies and in some parts of the world.
TeeYiYi
(8,028 posts)They drive me crazy but I cut every one I get.
TYY
Inkfreak
(1,695 posts)Hopefully some day they'll be eliminated.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Trillions of Plastic Pieces May Be Trapped in Arctic Ice
http://www.democraticunderground.com/122829523
By Eric Hand Thursday, May 22, 2014 - 5:30pm
Humans produced nearly 300 million tons of plastic in 2012, but where does it end up? A new study has found plastic debris in a surprising location: trapped in Arctic sea ice. As the ice melts, it could release a flood of floating plastic onto the world.
Scientists already knew that microplasticspolymer beads, fibers, or fragments less than 5 millimeters longcan wind up in the ocean, near coastlines, or in swirling eddies such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But Rachel Obbard, a materials scientist at Dartmouth College, was shocked to find that currents had carried the stuff to the Arctic.
In a study published online this month in Earths Future, Obbard and her colleagues argue that, as Arctic ice freezes, it traps floating microplasticsresulting in abundances of hundreds of particles per cubic meter. Thats three orders of magnitude larger than some counts of plastic particles in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It was such a surprise to me to find them in such a remote region, she says. These particles have come a long way.
The potential ecological hazards of microplastics are still unknown. But the ice trap could help solve a mystery: Industrial plastic production has increased markedly in the last half-century, reaching 288 million tonnes in 2012, according to Plastics Europe, an industry association. But ecologists have not been able to account for the final disposition of much of it. The paper shows that sea ice could be an important sinkalbeit one that is melting, says Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, who was not part of the study. There could be freely floating plastics, in short order. The authors estimate that, under current melting trends, more than 1 trillion pieces of plastic could be released in the next decade.
more
http://news.sciencemag.org/earth/2014/05/trillions-plastic-pieces-may-be-trapped-arctic-ice
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So fucked...
totodeinhere
(13,058 posts)And of course we have to have asses replying that the photo was photoshopped. But actually it wasn't.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)I'm thinking about necks stretched by rings, feet-binding, and so on...