Monday, February 22, 2010

A Sea of Plastic


A weekend visit to a small natural "beach" near the Genentech campus in South San Francisco reminded me of just how many varieties of plastic are floating around out there in our oceans and waterways. These shots represent just a small sample of debris from a tiny stretch of the San Francisco Bay measuring no more that 500 sq. ft. Pretty depressing. Then I watched the video below and got even more depressed.

I felt a little better when I read about funding to help clean up the Great Lakes, but the task still seems overwhelming. Reuters reports:
A year after President Barack Obama proposed a plan to clean up the Great Lakes, the government Sunday laid out its plan to improve the ecology of the major bodies of water that support much of U.S. agriculture and industry.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson met with governors of states that touch the inland waterways to describe an "action plan" that will focus on eliminating invasive species, cleaning up pollutants, and remediating more than a half million acres of the area's wetlands, she told reporters.

"It's about creating a new standard of care for the Great Lakes system," Jackson said. "Instead of minimizing harm, our new standard of care is to leave the Great Lakes better for the next generation than the condition in which we inherited them."



















7 comments:

  1. Well, that's a happy way to start my day. =^O

    Thanks for sharing, Gordie.

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  2. I like to start the work week on an upbeat note. I just had some toast and now I'm looking at the useless little plastic tab they used to allegedly seal the plastic bag the bread comes in. It doesn't even work, and you can't recycle it.

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  3. As sad as this is, I really do appreciate you sharing this...it makes one think. The good news is, you found the other lens to my sunglasses! =^)

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  4. Yeah, this is depressing. The beach at San Pedro is the same, and I can't even stand to go down there anymore. I stay up on the bluffs, in a barely contained state of denial.

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  5. Unlike a few weekends ago, I am not the source of your depression on this weekend morning. But this depression thing, it's not becasue your getting older that it happens more often, is it? ; )

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  6. Is that a lunch-sized cup of urine in the third photo?

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  7. Sable, lay off the booze, man. If you're in old Michigan, it's 12:15. Time to head home.

    Actually, I wondered the same thing. I feared it was medical waste of some sort given its vibrant color. Didn't want to get too close.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.