Future History: Plastic Water Bottles

This short (2 minute) video from KQED images a time far in the future where athropologists are trying to determine what our civilization used "sacred vessels" for - they must have been important because we used so many of them, but what could they have contained. The future anthropologists pretty much discounted the theory that it might be water, since:

• we already had water piped into our homes and businesses
• and ...
  
  To manufacture one plastic bottle takes
  1/4 bottle of petroleum plus 3 bottles of water

Source: KQED

Article - Recycling plastics

This CNN report, Recycling plastics, provides this quick synopsis:

• Only 1 percent of plastic bags produced globally each year are recycled
• Recycling of plastics has declined in U.S. despite rise in recycling programs
• Many think more incentives to recycle or bans on some plastic products needed
• Rising oil prices could be economic incentive to use more recycled plastics

Read the full article here.

Source: CNN.com

Buyer Beware: Harmful Microplastics in Facial and Body Scrubs

In the past few 20 years, many health and beauty companies have begun utilizing 'microbeads' as exfoliates in cleansing products. This is economical for the corporations but creates a large problem when these particles are rinsed off your body and into the wastewater stream. Many of these particles are too small to be filtered out in wastewater treatment screens. So, the final destination for these plastic microbeads is often our oceans.

Read more at http://izzitgreen.com/blog/2010/04/buyer-beware-harmful-microplastics-in-facial-and-body-scrubs/.

Brochure - Trawl Net Recycling

Commercial fisherman should recycle their trawl nets:

• to reduce storage and disposal costs
• reduce solid waste in landfills, and costly dealys if nets are entangled in equipment
• because lost nets and other debris can smother and crush sensitive ecosystems and bottom-dwelling species
• because fishing nets and line can entangle, maim or drown wildlife species

See the brochure - Fisherman's Terminal - Trawl Net Recycling, for more information about this program begun April 2008. (press release)

Source: Port of Seattle