Garbage Island 2x Size of Texas - In Ocean
Many of my posts are relative to entrepreneurship and self-development, but today it will have a great twist!
Yesterday I came across a post done by @dana-edwards regarding the pollution in our drinking water and the Michigan tap water epidemic. Reading that post struck a chord inside my heart, and I decided to further elaborate on the causes of water pollution.
Make a Change
As an entrepreneur, I always look for a way to be innovative and benefit the world with my product. Elon Musk is a fabulous example of the extraordinary entrepreneur we should all aim to be like, he owns three businesses that are over $1 billion in value. Each company Elon Musk owns has some world benefit twist to it, for example; Tesla the electric car company, trying to bring electric cars back into society and make it main stream and stop carbon pollutions from vehicles.
Elon Musk's company Solar City aims to have every house hold one day running off of solar power. Paypal to make electronic money transfers and payments, it saved millions of trees reducing paper waste from going to physical banks and getting paper statements.
World Population
The year today is 2017, and the world is in need for innovation in technology and products that can help reduce and reverse the carbon footprint of human kind. You may ask why or how, well the issue at hand is, our beloved planet Earth is rapidly becoming unsustainable. The levels of consumption of food, water and, energy are through the roof.
The Global Footprint Network's data shows that with the current levels of consumption the planet can only sustain 2 billion people. The earth is estimated to surpass 9 billion people by the year 2050 according to the United Nations.
The number of individuals is growing, and we need to find a sustainable solution, beginning with our water supplies!
The Great Pacific Patch
The name sounds grand, so do the pictures, although the reality is there's nothing great about it. The "Great" Pacific Patch is a horror and atrocity done by man kind, and one of many. In 1999 Charles J. Moore was returning home from the North Pacific, and on the journey, he saw huge lengths of debris in the water. Once the ship becomes close enough to the patch it became evident in size; he mentions it was double the size of the state of Texas.
How the Patch Begot
All the plastic entering into the ocean starts with you and me, once your throw that McDonald's smoothly cup out the window of your car it get's flow away to a near by storm drain. These storm drains have wide cracks between each other and pedestrians or cars run over these cups, bottle, and plastic until they fall through.
Streams and Rivers
I used to think the water going into the storm drains would go through a filtration system, but they don't. The water and all the junk just fall into the storm drain and then flows into a nearby stream that eventually connects to a river.
Then it fills up the creeks with garbage.
Once the water passes through the rivers and streams, the plastic is breaking down into smaller and smaller particles in the process.
There after the plastic moves into a Lake that the currents of the river leading into the body of water. The plastic eventually stays here and follows the waves, breaking down into smaller pieces, then it goes into the connected ocean.
The little debris of plastic has finally entered into the ocean and now floating around in the currents for some time. Eventually, the high-temperature winds push the currents toward the west, and the cold winds blow to the east. These two flows of air start a whirl pool effect in the ocean, so all of the debris begin to gather in the center just like when you flush the toilet all the water goes to the center.
The Effects of the Pollution
The backlash from the plastic debris in the ocean is unbelievable, many birds and marine animals are digesting it. The stomach acid is incapable of breaking down the plastic waste, and it stays in their abdomen.
Many marine animals are ingesting the debris, and it is killing them off. This pollution impacts over 267 marine life species. A study done in 2008 by Angelita researchers by fishing, they found from the 672 fish caught 35% of them had ingested plastic debris.
Plastic in Our Food
According to their experiment, we have a chance of ingesting plastic as well that are caught in the stomachs of the fish. For humans to ingest these plastics is known to cause cancer, although almost everything causes cancer at this point. These plastics become more potent and toxic to people as it is passed on through out the food chain until it reaches our plates.
How to Make a Difference
Since my posts are mostly about entrepreneurship, we all should focus on creating products that can decompose quickly and cause less damage to the world.
Another important fact to consider is how we can make a change in the damage done already. I want you all to put your thinking caps on now and brainstorm ideas how the ocean can be cleaned.
@doitvoluntarily Commented about a even greater project a 19 year old young man started!
In this video, you can see some youth who invented a floating water vacuum that sucks up the debris in holds it like a garbage bag. They are ordinary people like you and me, but they saw the pollution and decided to make a difference! We should think twice before using plastic bags and littering because it might just end up right back on your plate!
Discuss below an idea you have that can be made to clean or filter the ocean.
If you enjoyed this post, please give it a resteem and follow me for more blogs!
Citations
World Population: http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable
How Pacific Patch is Created: http://baysidejournal.com/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-myth-or-grim-reality/
How debris get into the Ocean: http://www.marinedefenders.com/marinedebrisfacts/how.php
Earth Sustainability: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160311-how-many-people-can-our-planet-really-support
What the Patch is: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html
Affected Marine Life: http://www.cleanwater.org/problem-marine-plastic-pollution
Catastrophic phenomena
Its very sad.
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reminds me of this video i saw recently..
It's heart breaking, the garbage has become so ordinary to animals that they recognize to clean it! There's also a video of an elephant picking up garbage on the streets when it got loose and putting it into the garbage can.
Awesome article with such an abundance of information! It was really sad to see some of those pictures, and I appreciate you bringing light to the issue. Your following are the type of people who can help solve this problem so I'm happy it's reaching them. I am currently still thinking after just finishing the article but I was going to mention the video you link and than I saw it in the article. I think that is a tremendous idea which could definitely be built or multiplied in some way to attack the problem at a fastest rate. I'll be thinking more, thanks again!
Thank you for the feed back! Im glad it had an impact to you as well. I am going to link another project into my article which one commenter mention which is even greater than the one i have posted! :D
also reminds me of this!
http://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-cleanup-array-that-could-remove-7250000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans/
That's incredible, all it took was one ambitious young man and loads of hard work. This is amazing to see, over 7 million tons of waste will truly make a difference. If there's enough funding to make up to 100 of these, eventually we can get the ocean clean again, only if we stop polluting too haha!
Lyrics from my song Where is the wall....find on reverbnation, or spotify. "Did you see that plastic Island, floating out opon the deep? It has no pristine mountains, no rivers lakes or trees. We throw our garbage out, it flows into the sea. Little fishes eat it, then so do we....Where is the wall that the handwritings on? Do you think that we could read it, if the writing weren't so small, or is the print just much too large for us to focus on?" Your head is on straght, keep up the good work. revdocwelch
Wow, that's powerful! Incredible lyrics, it really is true. It's island with no trees or mountains just full of garbage, i love the lyrics!
Good post to bring awareness!
Thank you! :D
thx bro for your support 0.25sbd
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Thanks for your post bro. I have learned something out of it. Great!
I appreciate the comment! I'm glad you learned something new today :D!
I think they should charge a deposit on every plastic bottle.. that way people would be less inclined to throw them away and others would be inclined to pick them up..
There are some great incentives I've seen at recycling plants where they pay you 5 cents for a plastic bottle and 25 cents for glass. People need to be more aware of these things and repercussions also.
In some states here they charge the buyer the deposit upfront .. generally 5 or 10 cents each.. but you get that back when you bring the can or bottle back