Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

SOS: President Trump champions bill, saying its time to Save our Seas
Communities Digital News ^ | Oct 11, 2018 | Jacquie Kubin

Posted on 10/11/2018 8:29:44 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

WASHINGTON: Something should have been done by previous administrations, but they ignored it. The problem of plastic in our oceans has been left to fester to unmanageable effect. Saying that over eight millions tons of garbage, plastic, is dumped into our oceans, the President says Save our Seas is an effort to clean the plastic out. No other political leader, not in the U.S. or any other country, is willing to stand up for the oceans.

The Save Our Seas Act, an important bill which reauthorizes and amends the Marine Debris Act, will act to promote international action to reduce marine debris. We can only hope this is more than a bill and that President Trump will get behind this important effort to clean our environment, not just the oceans, of plastic.

Millions of tons of single-use plastic in the environment It is staggering to realize that more than two million tons of single-use (use once and throw away) plastic soft drinks bottles are sold each year. The number of those bottles made from recycled materials, about 6.6%, is very limited. A Greenpeace survey found that five of six global soft drinks firms sold single-use plastic bottles. These numbers do not include data from the Coca-Cola Co., who declined to provide researchers with their plastic usage data.

Single-use drinks bottles are a visible part of the problem of plastics pollution in the world’s oceans. Single-use drink bottles are the most common type of plastic packaging found washed up on shorelines globally, Greenpeace tells the Guardian newspaper.

All those millions of tons of plastics swirling around in the South Pacific Gyre and the oceans will take centuries to break down. In the process of that plastic breaking down, smaller particulates are broken down, ingested by sea and bird life.

(Excerpt) Read more at commdiginews.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bipartisan; ganges; india; marinedebrisact; maritime; plastic; pollution; rivers; saveourseas; saveourseasact; trumpasia; trumpenvironment; yangtze
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-42 next last
To: Aliska

Recycled plastic is suitable for nothing. Most of it gets landfilled while you are looking the other way.


21 posted on 10/12/2018 3:41:52 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democracy dies when Democrats refuse to accept the result of a democratic election they didn't win.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Trump doing more for the environment and Mother Earth than dems ever imagined - by going after actual problems that can actually be solved because they really are man-made....


22 posted on 10/12/2018 3:59:12 AM PDT by trebb (So many "experts" with so little experience in what they preach....even here...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum; blueplum
Seems to me years ago I read that US law requires plastic manufacturers to change their formulas so plastic exposed to the elements will naturally degrade faster.

Might that be a solution?
Just increase the rate of decomposition of plastics once discarded?

23 posted on 10/12/2018 4:58:08 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK

Sounds nice. Where did you get your chemistry degree?


24 posted on 10/12/2018 5:02:47 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democracy dies when Democrats refuse to accept the result of a democratic election they didn't win.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

It’s mind boggling how some countries still poop in their drinking waters and dump their garbage into their rivers and oceans where they fish. Obamy was all into globull warming but ignored the pollution in the oceans which is something that can actually been fixed.


25 posted on 10/12/2018 5:07:07 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know. how people are infected with Ebola.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum
"Sounds nice. Where did you get your chemistry degree?"

{sigh} -- so you're not going to post a straight answer, just sharpshoot me and make me look it up myself?

OK, here it is: biodegrade & photodegrade plastics.

Implying that once the sources of new trash are stopped, the oceans will begin to clean themselves in relatively short time periods.
26 posted on 10/12/2018 5:48:21 AM PDT by BroJoeK ((a little historical perspective...))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK

In the 1970’s there was a plan in NYC to install high temp incinerator stations at the city dumps to burn the garbage. The garbage would burn at such high temperatures that there would be little to no pollution introduced into the atmosphere. Unfortunately NIMBY killed the idea.

My plan would be to take 10 retiring container ships and convert them into incineration vessels, capable of collecting the garbage and using a conveyor system, move the garbage into the incinerators. The harmless ash can then be introduced back into the water or bought by companies and used for whatever.


27 posted on 10/12/2018 5:59:14 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Proud member of the DWN party. (Deplorable Wing Nut))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum
There's a good tech solution that was crowdfunded.

The Ocean Cleanup

28 posted on 10/12/2018 6:01:11 AM PDT by Lazamataz (On future maps, I suggest we remove the word "California" and substitute "Open-Air Asylum".)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

What angers me is that the liberals demanded plastic to save trees and for the United States to reduce steel. Somehow that is lost in the message. So irritating.


29 posted on 10/12/2018 6:14:42 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: napscoordinator
What angers me is that the liberals demanded plastic to save trees and for the United States to reduce steel. Somehow that is lost in the message. So irritating.

Much of the environmental stuff is total BS actually increasing pollution and almost always increasing costs. I have to spend $$$$$$ to replace 13 year old "environmental friendly" shingles they used in 2005 without fiberglass. 30 year shingles with fiberglass would have saved landfill space and tens of thousands of dollars.

30 posted on 10/12/2018 6:17:45 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: Lazamataz

Very interesting. Although it says garbage free by 2050, I believe as they go through the process they will improve on what is being done and the timeframe shrinks.


31 posted on 10/12/2018 6:18:01 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum
This plastic mess isn't some mystical government power grab, it's a huge, disgusting and dangerous immediate problem.

The US and Europe do not contribute much to this problem, but we all have to live with it. Africa and Asia need to clean up their act and we need to lean on them to stop being so insanely irresponsible.

32 posted on 10/12/2018 6:19:40 AM PDT by dead
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 1Old Pro

I get it. Same with refrigerators, TVs, computers, air conditioners and everything else that has, a now reduced lifespan. Liberals are the ones destroying our environment.


33 posted on 10/12/2018 6:20:35 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: napscoordinator

That one really kills me. We used to make things that lasted decades. Now everything’s imported and low quality so we have to throw it away in a few years, especially since we can’t buy parts to repair anything.

Glass is completely recyclable. I remember going to the dump 35 years ago and they had barrels for glass. One for green glass, one for brown glass and several for clear glass. Return for deposit for glass like the old coke bottles was even better. They just cleaned them and reused them.


34 posted on 10/12/2018 6:37:47 AM PDT by Pollard (If you don't understand what I typed, you haven't read the classics.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Kriggerel

I am also presented with this stereotypical ideology quite often also. Extreme Purism can be counter productive and harmful to the faith as a whole.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with caring for the environment and being a Christian conservative. The problem is absolute radical extremism and purism in either direction.

There are indeed practical multiuse compromises that work out fine for both man and the environment. And to stereotypically associate caring for the environment as purely radical liberalism is ignorant.


35 posted on 10/12/2018 6:43:29 AM PDT by Openurmind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: piasa

I have read this ideology right here many times...


36 posted on 10/12/2018 6:45:40 AM PDT by Openurmind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: napscoordinator

“Recycling” is the biggest scam.

Some things can be recycled economically and turned into useful products. Most can’t.

Aluminum recycling works for the most part.

Plastic recycling doesn’t because the quality of recycled plastic makes it worth less than nothing. There are far too many kinds of plastics to throw them all together and make something useful.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/more-recycling-wont-solve-plastic-pollution/

Incineration worked. It will eventually work again.


37 posted on 10/12/2018 6:46:09 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Democracy dies when Democrats refuse to accept the result of a democratic election they didn't win.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: BroJoeK

The supermarket I frequent used to have plastic bags made of corn starch. [somehow]
If you threw them out in the yard to see what would happen, they pretty much dissolved fairly quick.
But they stopped using them.
No idea why.

Back in the good ol’ days, we had a burn barrel.
Everything was reduced to ashes and a tiny lump of melted plastic.
You could put a weeks’ worth of family trash in a shoe box.
But burn barrels were outlawed.

Because all that crap being buried in landfills was *so* much more environmentally friendly...somehow.


38 posted on 10/12/2018 7:56:23 AM PDT by Salamander (My Soul's On Fire... [I miss you, Shibumi])
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Crucial
We should take care of the environment because we live in it. We should do it for ourselves and for the benefit of lining some liberal’s pocket.

I think you meant "and not for the benefit of lining some liberal’s pocket".

39 posted on 10/12/2018 10:51:11 AM PDT by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Build the Wall Faster! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: JimRed

Right, it’s “not for the benefit of lining a liberal’s pocket.”

A Russian-bot must have changed my post. Yeah, that’s it. :)


40 posted on 10/12/2018 10:54:05 AM PDT by Crucial
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-42 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson