-- From the Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice
of the National Association of Realtors
-- not exactly your typical bunch of crazy left-wing progressive bleeding heart treehuggers.
Barry Commoner
"Every human action has an equal and opposite reaction in nature - Newton's Third Law gone wild."
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity,stability, and beauty
of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Aldo Leopold
"I think that one of the things that happens when we experience or observe any creature in the wild
is the inspiration that it gives us about individual freedom, courage, being able to take care of yourself,
take care of your own, and create your own life."
John Denver
from the documentary "Let This Be a Voice"
"Even in remote areas, people have a clear sense of environmental threats and how crucial it is to counter them. But in every case they added a caveat: First, bread must be put on the table; one cannot starve today to preserve the environment for tomorrow."
"I pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora, fauna and human life that it supports, one planet indivisible, with safeair, water & soil, economic justice, equal rights and peace for all."
Buy the button.
Image here.
"Every American - conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat - wants a clean environment and safe food. The debate about the environment is not about whether we should protect it, but how we should protect it."
Well, I suppose we can all agree on that --
"I spent much of my Saturday doing an interesting thing. Together with another 30 or so people, I went along to my local nature reserve (Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, Southampton) and took part in an effort to clear the shore of its tons upon tons of human crap. Unsatisfied with our constant use of resources, our epic, manic pollution, and our rampant annihilation of other species, we aim to cover as much of the planet's surface as possible in our waste: we are literally doing our very best to swamp natural environments with the discarded sh*t that we can't be bothered to deal with properly. ...Links are a mix of mine and original. Emphasis is mine - ed.
... among the two bin-bags of crap that I collected were untold numbers of used tampon applicators, plastic bottle tops, plastic bags, drinking straws, two rubber ducks, and thousands upon thousands of polystyrene fragments.
But most disturbing were the millions upon millions of tiny plastic fragments, referred to as "nurdles" or mermaid's tears (the latter term is particularly inappropriate given that it seems a bit of a smear on mermaids to imply that they might be involved in global pollution). Nurdles are said to result from the constant attrition of floating plastic waste, created as plastic objects bump together and break apart while in the water.
However, as you can see from the photo ... note that most of them are small, round beads. My mum (who also participated in the event) proposes that these are the pellets that are produced by the recycling of plastic bottles, and after a bit of research on this I think she might be right. What the hell they're doing contributing to pollution like this is a good question. In fact there were so many nurdles that in many places the entire beach -- as far down as I could dig -- was predominantly composed of them: they formed the very fabric of the beach itself, held in place by the reeds that grow through them. ...
Plastic crap can be thought of as having a two-tiered effect on animals and ecosystems. The most obvious immediate effect on animals is that a huge list of marine species -- predominantly all of those that have evolved to prey on plasticky-looking prey items (like sea jellies, planktonic crustaceans, and fish larvae)-- are routinely eating plastic, and it is killing them. (Naish gives a list of examples) ...
The second effect is less obvious, but it is more sinister and, in ecological terms, more pervasive. Plastic fragments might be assumed to be inert and inoffensive but the stuff that plastics contain -- benzene, vinyl chloride, and a long list of other substances -- leach out of the rubbish and are incorporated into the environment, and hence into living things. PCBs and other pollutants concentrated in plastics have been linked to cancer and reduced fertility in laboratory animals, genital deformity in human babies, stuff like that, and because many of the plastic fragments floating in the sea and washing up on the beaches are literally decades old, they still contain types of pollutants that are now banned.
The sad news is that it's not just beaches that are now swamped in layers of plastic crap. Two immense areas composed of 'plastic soup', the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, are now said to occupy much of the central Pacific, covering an area approximately twice that of the continental United States, weighing about 3.5 million tons, and stretching from the Californian coast, past Hawaii, and almost as far as Japan. ... similar accumulations (are) present in the North and South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In fact the United Nations Environmental Program estimates that an average of 46,000 bits of plastic rubbish now float in every single square mile of ocean, with perhaps 40% of the sea's surface littered by plastic [image below from 2007 article here: pretty depressing but worthy reading on the deaths of Pacific seabirds and other animals resulting from plastic pollution].
Like every other human in the developed/developing world, I know that I am part of the problem, even though I have never dropped litter my entire life, plus I try hard to minimise what plastic waste I and my family produce. We can all do what we can to minimise the amount of plastic rubbish we discard: stop using plastic bags, re-use containers, dispose of rubbish responsibly, don't select products that overdo it on the packaging.
But with so many people in the world, so much production of and reliance on plastic, and so little being done, plus so many people who obviously don't care in the slightest, things are only going to get worse (Naish gives a ref here: Ryan, P. G. 1993. Marine litter keeps increasing. Nature 361, 23)."
"Last weekend I and about 40 other people worked together in another effort to rid the shore at Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, Southampton (UK), of rubbish. ...
Much of the beach macro-litter was 'street litter': crisp packets ("snack chip bags"), carrier bags (Not sure but I assume that this means "plastic shopping bags"), chocolate bar wrappers, drink bottles, tin cans. The sort of stuff that people throw down in the street. (Along with a lot of "household waste".) ...
A while ago I read a claim that the plastic carrier bag had become the poor scapegoat of the global anti-litter movement, and that it really wasn't Public Enemy Number 1 as argued. I have some experience at picking up rubbish, and let me tell you that this claim is what's technically known as bullsh*t. Sorry, but plastic bags are ubiquitous in waste, and a bloody nuisance. In a day's worth of litter-collecting on the beach you can pick up hundreds.
I am pleased to see that people are increasingly aware of Modbury in Devon, a town which -- as of May 1st 2007 -- became completely plastic bag free, and all thanks to the efforts of a single woman, Rebecca Hosking. After witnessing the plight of Hawaii's beaches and seabirds in her work as a wildlife film-maker, she became determined to make a difference [see her article here].
... if it seems that litter is only 'cosmetic' and doesn't really matter as goes ecology, trophic webs and the lives of animals (including humans), I would remind you of the abundant data showing that diverse animals are now routinely eating plastic and dying as a result. Worse still is that the pollutants contained within plastics (benzene, vinyl chloride, and so on) leach out and have been linked to cancer and reduced fertility in laboratory animals, genital deformity in human babies, stuff like that."