Science Forums 2

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Mick

...The perils of producing too much plastic
100 million tonnes of plastic produced each year.

1 million sea-birds killed each year by ingesting or getting tangled up in plastic bags, according to Greenpeace.

275,000 tonnes of plastic used each year in the UK – that is about 15 million bottles per day.

500 years How long it takes plastic to decompose.

4% The rate at which the use of plastic in Western Europe is growing.

||54|| Number of recycled plastic bottles that would save enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 3 hours.

600,000 tonnes of plastics litter that Dutch scientists estimate lies on the bed of the North Sea. The litter can smother the sea bottom and kill marine life.

90 days How long it takes for a new type of biodegradable resin manufactured in America called Plastarch Material to break down by 70 per cent.

That plastic garbage business in the ocean...I saw a bit from Cousteau I think on the plastic soup in the Pacific gyre.

Originally Posted by Wiki

Phenomenon
The center of the North Pacific Gyre is a relatively stationary region of the Pacific Ocean (the area it occupies is often referred to as the horse latitudes). The circular rotation around it draws waste material in and has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photodegrades, disintegrating in the ocean into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested.[1] Some plastics photodegrade into other pollutants.

The gyre is discussed in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us as an example of the near-indestructibility of discarded plastic. ...

Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We need a plant that breaks down plastic into fuel. I got nuthin'.