Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
Prefatory Note: As you might have figured out, Joy of Fishes is taking a break. We can all use a hiatus now and again (I’ve done it as well); so for the foreseeable future we will have fill-in posts from me. Still, that brings me to reaching out for anyone interested in hosting a Morning Open Thread. At present, we have Saturdays, and Sundays available.
If you’re interested, just drop me a kosmail and let me know.
Good morning everyone. There are thunderstorms across the gulf coast of Louisiana and a tornado warning was just issued for a few Parishes (including mine). As someone who loves the waters around here, I want to remind all of us that we’re doing a piss-poor job of caring for our oceans.
For so-called caretakers of this plant and rational being, we certainly are doing our damnedest to destroy it. The Ocean Conservancy estimates that each year “8 million metric tons of plastics enter our ocean on top of the estimated 150 million metric tons that currently circulate our marine environments.” The Fact Sheet from Earth Day 2018 alone should make us all ashamed of the amount of garbage we dump into our oceans. There are five major massive patches of plastics in the oceans and the one between California and Hawaii is the size of Texas.
The development of plastic itself has an odd history. The search began because billiards was such a popular game in the late 19th century. Billiard balls were made from ivory but we were killing off the natural source of at such a rate that the industry began to look around for a synthetic replacement. The first attempt produced celluloid, which was great at molding into shapes but not so great on a billiard table. The next step came in the early 20th century when Leo Baekeland came up with a man-made replacement for shellac. Using phenol from coal tar he developed Bakelite, the first fully-synthetic plastic. From Bakelite we quickly moved to nylon, polythene, PVC, polystyrene, and polyester.
The most dangerous plastics in our oceans comes from microplastics, microfibers, and microbeads. Simply put, microplastics are the result of the natural breakdown of plastic through the photodegradative effect (UV light allows oxygen atoms to infiltrate the polymers in the plastic and lead to its breakdown). While it takes a long time for this to happen (and slower in the darker recesses of the oceans), the plastics will eventually become small pieces and are readily ingested by sea life. Microfibers are just what they sound like and they come from washing synthetic clothes and the wash water making its way to our oceans. Microbeads are tiny beads of polyethylene used in personal care products, cleansers, toothpastes, and the like. We wash this down the drains constantly and this too makes its way to the oceans to be ingested by all manner of marine life (close to 700 species) and even sea birds.
I’m not anti-plastic by any means, but we really do have to cut this shit out as much as possible. At least, I think, be conscious of what we use in our daily lives that may well end up in one of the great garbage patches in the oceans or in the belly of the fish we catch for dinner. Below are a couple of ideas for addressing the problem. Small, granted, but they are but two of many and at least a step in the right direction.
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“One group of local fisherman in Kenya are building a boat entirely from plastic waste to raise awareness about marine plastic pollution.”
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“Can we solve the problem of ocean plastic pollution and end extreme poverty at the same time? That's the ambitious goal of The Plastic Bank: a worldwide chain of stores where everything from school tuition to cooking fuel and more is available for purchase in exchange for plastic garbage -- which is then sorted, shredded and sold to brands who reuse "social plastic" in their products. Join David Katz to learn more about this step towards closing the loop in the circular economy. "Preventing ocean plastic could be humanity's richest opportunity," Katz says.”
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?