Recently, the news outlets have been buzzing about environmental issues, which I am glad they are since our government is doing so little to fix them.
Early this year there was news about China banning recycling from the United States. Its a clear example of how single-stream recycling has gone wrong. Not to mention how we haven't invested any money in educating people how to recycle properly. Nor have we bothered to hold companies accountable on how to recycle their products.
National Geographic has been doing a special edition on plastic pollution with tons of photos of places that have been polluted with plastic waste. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Also, this article that came hot off the press from Wired about finding plastic in our poop! With microplastics found in 8 different subjects from 8 different countries, it is hard to deny the results of this study. I know there are many health conscious people out there who try to eat clean and healthy, but this is evidence that we may have polluted our planet so much so that we can no longer be confident about our food sources.
What is heartening are the companies and efforts that are popping up to clean up plastic waste in our ocean. Companies like 4Ocean and the Ocean Cleanup) which has raised an 2.2 million dollars in crowdfunding) are sprouting up and taking over. We all need to act fast as time is running out...
*** Edit
A small victory in the EU today. An article published on the BBC states that the EU will now ban single-use plastics. This is a huge step in the right direction! The stats in this article are terrifying. It is said that 150,000 tonnes of plastics are thrown into the ocean. And nearly 50% of marine litter is single use plastic.
