Dominican Republic

[Art Blade]

By now, about 500 voluntary helpers and the military have removed an estimated 1,000 tons of garbage from the beaches using shovel excavators and other methods. Playa de Montesinos in Santo Domingo has been among the beaches affected the worst by garbage waves. The beaches affected are supposed to be clean again on Tuesday, July 24th, 2018. Until the next garbage wave hits.

[PZ]

Reminiscent of a Sargasso sea, but of trash.

Many people are just worthless trash themselves. In my neighborhood many of the workmen hired to do various tasks throw cigarette butts and other trash out their vehicle windows wherever they want. I guess they think that because we live in the woods it is okay to trash it. Most recently, I found a 12-pack cardboard beer container with several glass bottles inside, simply discarded on the side of our private road, and we cannot walk a hundred yards without finding some kind of trash that we need to pick up. People in general are simply disgusting - they seem to have the attitude: "hey, everyone else throws out trash, so I can too"

[fragger]

Shocking I'm aghast at some of what humans do to this planet. We're leaving a toxic legacy which will take centuries, if not millennia, to dissipate. I try to do the right things such as recycling as much as I can and disposing of harmful products responsibly, but it only goes so far when you're competing against the godawful slobs of the world.

Same here PZ, people are grots I'm currently working with a few other guys building a public concrete footpath to the beach, and part of it runs along the edge of some bushland. The garbage we come across... Old beer bottles, scraps of paper and fast-food containers, bits of plastic - I even found an old hula-hoop in the brush the other day. There is a sheltered bus stop outside the local supermarket, and even though there is a double garbage bin for both general waste and recyclables literally right next to the flipping stop, there are always bits of rubbish under the bench. The buggers are too lazy to get off their arses and walk four feet to the bin. Too much effort for them, apparently - it's easier to just throw their rubbish under the seat they're sitting on.

Seriously, if you're out and about, how hard is it to hang on to a piece of rubbish until you find a bin, or get home? If I'm in the car and I get food or something, if I can't find a bin I'll take the wrappers and stuff home with me and throw it in my own bin. Doesn't cost me anything. Some people are simply disgusting.

[PZ]

I feel your pain, fragger. 

There is an alpine lake we formerly liked to visit to fish for trout. It was a gorgeous setting, small lake surrounded by the mountains. It was so high in elevation you could not drive there until July to ensure the snow was melted. At the time I frequented the place, we often were the only people at the lake for the entire weekend.

Then the newspaper in the neighboring city of Spokane published a story highlighting this particular lake. Afterwards, we visited and found it trashed beyond belief, and even found a shitty diaper hanging from the bush where we formerly parked our rig.

This all reminds me of the series, the Walking Dead where the trash people take over the world. There is no respect for the wonders of the planet, just opportunities to take what you want at the expense of others. Reminds me of the Donald tRump world.

[mandru]

So Trump is going to get bashed even here? 

I'm not saying these conditions mentioned in the video and in the personal experiences that have been related are not a real and highly important problem/threat to the world's well being.  This is a serious world wide problem but it's not us (within this small circle of friends) that are responsible for the situation nor are we really able to do anything to stop its occurrence.  The proof is conclusive that throwing money at anything like this only ends up being skimmed off by the corrupt leaders and their cronies who have allowed or even promoted these conditions to exist in the first place before any of the contributed funds are actually applied to fix the condition.

International sanctions and locking off foreign aid to the polluters would have far more impact.  Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

This is of course being reported by CNN (avowed mortal enemy of Trump, morality and all decency) so you're not going to get a glowing report out of them about anything other than the slow march of the U.S. into communism.  And still people still lap this *bleep* up. 

I would ask you to observe how this clip starts out by being presented as a bonafied news story but then gets perverted into a shaming "We've got to do more" soapbox which is aimed entirely at the wrong target. 

Notice that this situation (as mentioned in the video) pops up every time it rains.  What more proof do you need to see that it's the Dominican Republic and Haiti the other country on the island that they themselves are creating this toxic condition.

At time mark 1:50 (to quote) "A leading U.S. Government Scientist told us...".  Please notice that the narrator omitted the name of the scientist, the field of science that scientist specialized in and even other small yet significant details of what year that scientist(?) made this comment, where he was (what venue) when they made this comment, what other 'shot in the dark' comments are they responsible for making (including the % of times they've totally missed the mark), and maybe even who this scientist voted for in the previous presidential election.

Government Scientist's funding (read that as their job and livelihood) is utterly dependent on tickling the ears of whatever the current leadership's flavors happen to be.  I hold the deep conviction that this sort of scientist is less reliable and more untrustworthy than a door to door Gypsy roofing team or most politicians for that matter.

It doesn't really matter that the U.S. (where we have worked beyond belief to clean up our act) is responsible for at most 5% of the current contribution of oceanic pollution until the rest of the world who actually care about this condition gets on the cesspool countries to make them fall in line.


Not long ago I was out in my back yard right at dusk having a smoke when a still warm and heavily soiled dirty diaper was lobbed over our fence.  Like a whale breaching the surface I did a quick spyhop* to size things up, confirm my target, and let fly.  You should have heard the unintelligible screech of middle eastern outrage when I parked that obscene object back on their van's dashboard and the inside of the windshield through the still open door with something approaching explosive force. 

*  www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZgafvk9M88

Believe me I want these guys to have clean oceans forever.

[BinnZ]

Plastic is the problem. As long as we produce and use it, we keep piling up the garbage. I bet America is the biggest plastics producer and consumer in the world, but that's easy to say for me living in one of the smallest countries of the world 😬

[Art Blade]

in my opinion it's not so important who's the biggest producer and user because all of us use and throw away plastic. The question is: how does it end up in rivers, lakes and finally in seas. You can throw a plastic bottle or a plastic straw or a plastic bag right into either one, or you can drop it on PZ's driveway, fling it over mandru's fence, "forget" it somewhere in the woods, drop it in the desert, on the beach, toss it over board of a river boat or a yacht or chuck it out of a plane.. so in the end, the cause is simple pollution. And from there it gets worse: plastic doesn't dissolve into thin air. It breaks down into fragments and those keep breaking down into smaller and smaller units until they are so small that you're going to have a hard time finding them with a microscope. Plastic starts to "rot" where it was left. It's not really rotting, it's falling apart, until it's small enough to seep into ground water, or gets blown into a river, in the end, it's everywhere. And all of that ends up in the water all of us (including plants and animals) are consuming. And that's when it starts to hurt. It doesn't belong in us.

So now that we know how it all works, the questions are: how can we stop that? and how can we get rid of what's already there? We can certainly reduce or even stop using one-way plastic stuff like straws and bags and could try to avoid producing and using plastic packaging. But seriously, we have no idea how to get rid of the stuff that's already there in our food chain, those nanoparticles which is the end-product of all plastic that wasn't recycled or burned.

[fragger]

The two major supermarket chains in Australia, Coles and Woolworths, have, to their credit, begun phasing out plastic grocery bags. Since the first of July this year, they have no longer supplied plastic bags for groceries. For the last month they have offered free alternatives, i.e. bags made of cloth or canvas which can be reused for years. Once July is over though, customers will then have to purchase these bags, but they only cost a couple of dollars each. I was able to snaffle up about half a dozen of the cloth bags free of charge before the deadline, which are a better alternative to plastic anyway since they're durable and a lot stronger. They have good handles on them and they fold up neatly too.

I should get many years use out of them. I just have to remember to take them with me when I go shopping...

It's a small step in the right direction, at least.

[Art Blade]

I don't know how many but here supermarkets have been changing from plastic to recycled paper bags. The one I frequent did that like 2 years ago, already. Now they're starting to reduce plastic packaging and to entirely skip plastic straws.

[PZ]

For $11 at Costco there was a satchel for groceries that had side pouches for bottle items, is collapsible, and carries enough groceries for myself and my wife for the week. I shop at Winco (groceries) where you bag your own stuff, and all fits into the satchel.  I'm trying my best to do my part in reducing the micro plastic contamination of our planet.

Alarming to read of your experience with the a$$hole throwing the diaper and the resultant negative interchange. Unfortunately there are always worthless pieces of $hit regardless of ethnic origin. I'm glad of your response to those fools - I would have done the same. You and I clearly differ in our thoughts about tRump and his administration, but as always, I respect your opinions and will continue to do so.

[mandru]

Plastic is not the enemy.  International policies that block the proper methods of dealing with post-consumer plastics en-mass and people who are not disposing of used plastics responsibly are.

Plastics can be either recycled or in most cases unlocked and converted into fuel and energy sources.  The principal problem is the worldwide petrochemical and natural gas bigwigs have made it all but impossible through putting money in the right pockets and lobbying for laws restricting new energy start ups to receive licensing for development and blocking the implementation of refineries towards those ends.

The blockage of development for the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (L.F.T.R.) is a prime example of king petro-chem snuffing out anything that threatens their stranglehold.  When was the last time you heard of a new nuclear power plant being launched?

And yet those same puppeteers push forward solar and wind which are extremely variable and not up to meeting the demand for business and public supply.  I know I'm not willing to go up on my roof every other week to scrub solar panels so that they remain at peak efficiency.  That in turn keeps the world in constant fear of not being able to meet their thirst/need for the reliable even if increasingly expensive products the energy syndicate really wants you to be hooked on.


Secondly, nations that refuse to enforce proper disposal of plastics as well as other refuse schooling their citizenry on each individual's personal responsibility to clean up after themselves should be sanctioned.

And lastly morons who are supposedly part of the civilized world who should know better and yet toss trash away in all the wrong places deserve no less than a punch in the head by anyone who catches them at it. 

[mandru]

As to the Bring Your Own Bag option to reduce plastic consumption there is a down side to that as well.

Currently we here in Utah have a high alert being announced on the news that there are produce items (veggies) attributed to several of our grocery store chains that are causing the spread of the same parasitic bug that is part of the ongoing parasitic outbreak that is nationally plaguing McDonald's and their customers.  The frustrating part of this news alert is that they haven't announced the product brand names so they can be avoided only the stores they are present in.

To me this intentional withholding of specifics seems more like someone (some group) is putting more effort into hurting those targeted stores than addressing the actual problem.


If you're not separating out your meats and vegetables with their own individual smaller plastic bags you're at risk.  Taking into consideration that you've handled (in manually plastic bagging) those meat and veggie products there's the hand sanitizer you would need to clean your hands after you've touched each possible contamination vector.

If you've not used hand sanitizer each and every time you've isolated an item in your Bring Your Own Bag or even if you have then you are still taking the risk that not every other customer (having skipped the hand sanitizer) who has previously used that same shopping cart is not as paranoid as you are with your sterilization and isolation practices.

This would mean for proper health safety that the Bring Your Own Bag will need to be washed each and every time you make a trip grocery shopping.  I know for Mrs. mandru and myself we would need several of those Bring Your Own Bags just to get through a week and at least one dedicated hot water load in the washing machine to keep the Bring Your Own Bags sanitized and safe for usage.

You might want to total up (for yourself) the trade offs for personal and environmental impact of Bring Your Own Bags weighed against the effects of that much hand sanitizer regularly scalding your skin, energy consumed (coal fire as ours is or hydro electric) in laundering the Bring Your Own Bags, and what chemicals from your laundry detergent are you running down the drain and into the environment.  Personally we chose to recycle and reuse plastic wherever possible and avoid products that are packaged in non-recyclable forms of plastic.

For recycling plastic shopping bags I group 3 or 4 together (I squeeze out the air and tie a big hairy double knot in the middle of their length so that there is zero chance that they can fill with air and balloon away on the wind like the ones I am constantly picking up out of my yard because of the filthy habits of the inhabitants of the two apartment  complexes that surround us on three sides.  And for the 4th side of our lot (the public access sidewalked and curbed street side) rather than carry their trash the few steps to dispose of their garbage properly in the provided dumpsters for their complex (that they have to walk past to get to their apartments) it's nothing for them to toss their trash bags (from snacks they've bought at the corner quickie-mart),  plastic bottles, and beer cans up into the carport of our duplex.

I'm all for living within the real principals of conservation and stewardship of our planet but utterly refuse to worship in any form at the altar of the Gr$$n movement which has only been created to control people by scaring them and line the pockets of the unprincipled.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting take on the reusable bags, mandru. I don't use them, as often as possible, I refuse a plastic bag if it's offered to me and I'm only buying a few items that I can easily carry in hand. Most of the time if the store has one, I use the self checkout because I find it faster, again, especially if I'm only buying a few items, then I grab the receipt and walk out with what I bought, no bag. When I do have to use a bag, I take it home and use it there for various things, mostly as a trash can liner so that it gets used again, and is disposed of in the trash instead of floating around in the wind or on the ocean. That is, of course, if the waste company we use hauls the trash properly to the land fill, which I think they do.

[PZ]

Not too shocking about the corporate suppression of the facts regarding the parasitic bug. The bottom line is exactly that - if anything negative is going to affect profits, then it is to be suppressed.

Stores in our area have the alcohol-based sanitizer sheets right next to the carts, and I use them mostly so I do not need to touch the cart handles gripped by people that do not bother washing their hands after going to the bathroom.

Like D_B, when I take plastic bags I'll at least re-use them in the form of trash can liners, especially when traveling in the RV.  Unfortunately there is no easy "one-size-fits-all" solution. There are simply too many people on the planet, and no one (other than China in the past) has been willing to limit procreation. The population of the world has increased by more than 50% in my lifetime, and as everyone knows, biological populations increase at an exponential level. The time will come when the planet cannot support human infestation.

[mandru]

Currently the 'all the rage' fad that's going around is a concerted push to illegalize and eradicate plastic drinking straws and yet not a word about the mountains of plastic water bottles consumed by these very same straw haters.