Prevention for the Great Pacific

Garbage Patch• Megan Harkins• Jessica Nelson• Andrew Mirto• Casey Brodmann• Danielle Perez

What is the Great Pacific Garbage

Patch?• Ocean currents collect floating garbage• Garbage drops into the path of the North

Pacific Subtropical Gyre• Trash is collected at the convergence

zone

Background (continued)

• Stretches for hundreds of miles in the Pacific Ocean

• Consists mostly of plastic

• Some may describe it as "trash island", but it is not that simple

Facts/Details • In the 1970s scientists started

studying the area. They noticed that the garbage collected together in a cluster.

• Approximately 3.5 million tons of plastic waste can be found in the garbage patch.

• 100,000 marine mammals each year are victims of plastic trash related deaths because they consume or become entangled in the waste.

• Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean.

• However, the actual discovery of the patch was made by a racing boat captain, Charles Moore.

Facts/Details Cont'd

The Harm of Our Actions

• Entanglement

• Small surface debrisex. plastic resin pellets

• Photodegredation-plastic's toxicity has harmful

environmental/health side effects

The Patch featured in ABC

Newshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a4S23uXIcM&feature=plcp

Major Players

Major Players• Greenpeace:

organization that advocates for green methods of keeping the earth healthy.

• Clean Ocean Action (COA): 125 groups using science, law, research, education, and citizen action to protect waterways.

• Captain Charles Moore: came across the Garbage Patch in 1997.

• Project Kaisei: non-profit organization focused on increasing awareness of marine debris

• Blue Frontier Campaign: has an emphasis on bringing citizen activists into the law-making process regarding environment.

• Oceana: works to prevent the irreversible collapse of sea life. More than 300,000 members worldwide.

Major Players

Our StanceReasons Why

Our Movement

Some California coasts do their best to clean up and prevent littering:• The City of Santa Monica: $1.2

Million (3 miles of beachfront)

• Orange County: $350,000 (6 miles of beachfront)

• The City of Long Beach: $1 Million• Estimated Total Annual Cost: $52.2

Million

California Beaches

A report done by Marine Resource Conservation working group of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),

"The damage caused by marine rubbish and debris is costing the Asia-Pacific region more than a billion dollars each year" (Discovery News, 2009).

An APEC Report

A study done by NOAA goes on to state that,

"Washington DC spent an average of $319,000 per year to operate and maintain two skimmer boats that remove floating debris from its waterways."

Marine Debris Information

• Cleaning up just 1%:• 67 Ships • Over 1 Year

o $5,000-$20,000 per Dayo $122 Million-$489 Million per Year

(Not including labor costs)

Cost Hypothesis

• Not to clean up what has already been done

• To stop contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

• Recycling:o Reusable Water Bottles

Our Stance

• Most types of plastic bottles are safe to reuse at least a few times of properly washed with hot soapy water.

• More than 40 billion plastic water bottles were sold this year in the US alone, about 80% will end up in a landfill

• Reusable bottles not only avoid waste:o saving energyo healtho saving money

Reusable Water Bottles

• If you prefer your residence to feature a bit more land and a little less water, this house is made of 8,000 plastic bottles and is one of many bottle homes built by honduras-based Eco-tex. The bottles are filled with mud and bound together with a cement mixture, offering low cost, long lasting construction

Acts of Education• To help educate people about what

can be done first people need to know what they can recycle.

• There are more ways to recycle besides the standard, such as using them to create items around the house. One man even made a boat out of bottles.

Something a little less extravagant can be clothes for yourself, or accessories for your pets, there are all kinds of things you can do with plastics, besides turning them in for cash, which is 5 cents a bottle, and paid by the weight for glass and plastics!

-Also you can do your own kinds of recyling, such as making clothes out of the plastics, or cloths even for your pets! Some people go as far as to make a house

Acts of Education Cont.

• Facebook• Website• Pact Signatures• Chalking

Our Movement

Arguments Against Recycling

• That the items will just be dumped anyways- Meaning that many recycling items are contaminated very easily and have to have whole batches of recycled items thrown away.

• Also that there is more pollution caused by shipping the contents of recycled goods to factories that can use them.

• Lastly the argument of costs, that the price to recycle it was more than the cost of just throwing it away

• While it is possible to have contamination in batches of recycled goods, the technology now has a much safer method of sifting through each piece, with machines and hand picking.

• Nowadays there are so many recycling places around the country the cost and pollution that used to be caused from transport has been eliminated

• The costs have also become negligent as there are new taxes for recycling as well as the ability to make money from it with 5 cents a bottle.

Counter-arguments

Plastic Paradise Movie (Trailer)

http://vimeo.com/42143924

Work Cited-Algalita marine research foundation. In (2010). Algalita Marine

Research Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.algalita.o-rg/abou-us/bios/htm

-Greenpeace usa. In (2010). Greenpeace.org. Retrieved from http-://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/

-Oceana. (2012). Retrieved from http://oceana.org/en/about-us/-what-we-do

-Reilly, M. (05 0). Recycling keep it out of the landfill. Retrieved from http://1800recycling.com/2010/04/case-against-recycling/

-Diane, B. (2010). Great pacific garbage patch:pacific trash vortex. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://education.nationalgeographic.com/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/?ar_a=1

-Croarkin, T. (2012). About.com. Retrieved from http://environment.about.com/od/earthtalkcolumns/a/recycleplastics.htm

California coastal commision. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.coastal.ca.gov/Phillips, N. (2009, Oct. 21). Discovery news. Retrieved from

http://news.discovery.com/earth/garbage-patch-ocean-cost.htmlhttp://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/physical-geography/facts-about-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/http://pottygirl.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/whos-to-blame-for-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-look-in-the-mirror/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/5208645/Drowning-in-plastic-The-Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch-is-twice-the-size-of-France.html