The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Now I have your attention lets talk trash! I always try and recycle around our house, my obsession didn’t start with me trying to save the planet one toilet roll at a time, it started because my household bin would get so full so quickly. So each time I had something that was for the recycling bin it meant one of two things, leaving it on the bench to deal with later or take it to the outside recycling bin right away. I quickly became sick of both options so I bought a plastic tub to sit inside at the bottom of the pantry where all recycling would go straight in to. This then became one of my sons jobs towards his pocket money to empty it when it was full. See my post on Learn To Earn for those ideas.

Soon everyone in the family got the drift and then the recycling tub turned in to two tubs at the bottom of the pantry because being a household of 5 we go through a bit of stuff. After Christmas we have two kids birthdays all in the same week so we were bombarded with toy packaging boxes. Soon my outside recycling bin was full, the two indoor tubs were full so I then had to turn to a huge 22Ltr plastic tub in the garage in order to put all the recycling somewhere until I could fit it in to the outside recycling bin. I am trying really hard to recylce since I learnt of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch but it can be hard work.

So I had to refine my already refined recycling plan with flattening each box as I came across it, and stacking it in the recycling tub vs just dumping it in. It has gone from ‘oh I’m helping to save the planet’ to ‘oh my god I’m so sick of cardboard and plastic’. I have only just caught up today with the bins finally empty after Christmas and two birthday parties and it’s almost March wow! Every time I get home from the shops I open the groceries and breakdown any packaging the food came in. I really feel like recycling is a loosing battle and the battle should be to get manufactures to use less packaging. Do the apples really need to come in a plastic tub, does everything really have to come in cardboard or plastic packaging that’s the bit that needs addressing I believe.

Do you recycle your plastic and cardboard, if you don’t after you read this you will understand the need to. Have you ever heard of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It is a disgusting plastic soup, the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean that traps all our human trash that has been formed by natural currents over the decades since we began using plastic. Did you know plastic is 100% non-biodegradable, it’s is broken down in to smaller pieces by the sun but it never goes away. It ends up floating on top of the ocean that is littered with dead birds and fish who have belly’s full of plastic that they thought was their food. I urge you to have a look on Google and You Tube and you too will become an avid recycler of all things plastic.

Have a look what human plastic does to our sea life. This old girl above who I have used two photos of to really imbed in your brain what is happening, was found with a plastic lid retainer ring around her body which was obviously stuck there since she was a bub. She was found like this and now lives at a Zoo Keepers home in America. This could be the ring of your protein powder container, something so simple ends up doing this to a sea turtle.

Five things you can do to help save what’s left of our children’s ocean:

1. Be apart of initiatives like “Clean Up Australia Day”, pick up that coke bottle you saw on the footpath that you walked past this morning because it WILL end up in the ocean.

2. Teach your children the truth about plastic and litter, encourage them to recycle.

3. Recycle everything you can and buy less plastic. Ditch the convenience of plastic cutlery, plates, cups, let’s stop being so f@#$*(g lazy! Choose glass over plastic as glass can be melted and reused.

4. Make sure your plastic bottle caps go in the bin. They are made from a different plastic that can not be recycled. They cause plastic bottles to float, the caps also float independently in the ocean and are eaten by birds, fish, turtles, dolphins you name it.

5. Tell others about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and what is happening to the ocean. Why isn’t this taught in schools, why don’t you know about this HUGE problem. Tell everyone you know and encourage them to change their recycling ways. Make sure you google it straight after reading this you will be shocked.

You can make a difference by recycling, and stop buying and using so much disposable plastic, also by educating the people in your life. Every bit helps I guess and that’s as close to saving the world as us normal people will ever get.

Happy Recycling.

Renee