The depiction to the left is a map depicting the currents of the oceans of the world due to the of the earth.  These circular currents called Ocean Gyres are formed when the

current is deflected by the continental shelves forming great swirls of water thousands of miles long.  Inside these giant currents are dead spots where there is no current at all.  The first and largest of these dead spots was discovered in the North Pacific Gyres in 1988.  An area of estimated to be approximately 900 NM wide and  420 NM High (135°-155°W & 35°- 42°N)  contains high concentrations of floating garbage and chemical sludge and is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  What is marine debris?  It is any man-made object in the water.  This can be a glass buoy that has broken loose from a fishing net, plastic bags, empty bottles and cans, to fragments of fishing nets afoul and cut loose to float upon the ocean, as shown to the left.  For example the aluminum soft drink can depicted below was found at a depth of 130 feet.  That is deeper than a scuba diver can normally descend.  According to the decomposition tables created by the Ocean Conservancy that root beer can will take from 80-200 years to decompose.  That's between 4 and 50 Generations that it will sit on the ocean floor.  What's the big deal about this? The higher content of aluminum as it slowly decomposes can be toxic to the marine life in its area.  Since the deep water corals can not move, it can have harmful effects on the reef life in its general area.  As the health of the reef decomposes, so the thousands of marine flora and fauna migrate to other areas, if they can and now have to compete with higher densities of other animals and plants to survive. Far more harmful still are plastics in the water.  Eventually after about 40 years the plastic shopping bag floating in the water will decompose.  Until that time the bag floating in the water looks like a jelly fish. Jelly fish are the preferred food of several species of marine life including the endangered leather-back turtle.  Often the turtle swallows the plastic bag, and it ends up lining it's stomach.  Without intervention the plastic will stop the absorption of food and the animal slowly staves to death.  Not only the Leather-back, but most turtles, and many other forms of marine life feed upon jelly fish and fall prey to plastic garbage bags.   The plastic in the bags is photodegradable, which means it will decompose in sunlight over time.  This can take as long as 40 years.  What does this have to do with a plastic shopping bag on the streets of a Midwestern city?

Webmasters Note:  With due apologies to the reader for capturing your attention with a Supermarket checkout banner, these are floating areas of death, to marine life, and great chunks of floating garbage called Marine Debris.  It was done for a good cause.  Did you know that the US Coast Guard is the lead federal agency charged with stopping the pollution of the marine Environment?  Did you also know that the US Coast Guard Auxiliary is tasked with the primary mission along with Recreational Boating Safety to prevent pollution by educating the public? The Environmental message is as  important to saving lives  as the message of wearing life-jackets. The difference is saving the lives of the creatures of the sea both big and small.  Try and make this a part of your message when you interact with the public, whether at a PA event or doing PE/PV work.

Well below the streets of the city are generally miles and miles of storm sewers.  These eventually flow into lakes, streams and rivers.  While you may live hundreds of miles from the ocean, it is likely that the inland waterways you live near feed into the ocean.  In fact, the Mississippi River and its tributaries drain 3/4's of the North American Continent.  A plastic bag on the streets of Chippewa Falls, WI can be blown into a storm sewer washed with storm water into the Chippewa River, and three to six months later be floating in the Gulf of Mexico.  That same plastic bag if thrown away in Wyoming in about the same time it would also reach the Gulf.  All forms of trash make up Storm water runoff.  The photo to the left is not untypical of the debris carried by storm water runoff from a typical city.  So what does all this trash mean to you?

First let's look at the direct cost to you.  As debris builds up in the storm sewer system, the ability of the storm sewer to carry the runoff is diminished.  This can lead to flooding which may have detrimental effects to neighborhoods.  City government responding to health and welfare concerns must clean these out which results in increased costs.  These increased costs are passed on to residents in the form of higher taxes. 

The runoff water containing petroleum products from driveways and other toxins it picks up  flows into the either the rivers & streams and/or a watershed.  If it flows into a watershed, it can then be transferred into the aquifers.  Aquifers supply most drinking water to cities, small towns, and individual wells.  Since these toxins disperse to molecular size when distributed in the water, they can not be removed by filtration or chemical means.  Thus the drinking water supply may be affected hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the point of pollution insertion due to runoff. 

Switching to bottled water is no solution, since most the bottled water in the United States is merely filtered tap water.  Additionally as of 2009 the U.S. consumed about 38 billion "disposable" plastic bottles of water and disposed of them as waste.  If laid end to end they would circle the globe 190 times! 

A more cost effective source of mobile drinking water, and better for you, is use an Acrylic, Polycarbonate, or Aluminum reusable water bottle to create less waste.  A simple faucet filter produces water just as pure as most bottled water, for less money.  The addition of Reverse Osmosis water to your home or boat will most likely improve the water quality of what you drink.  In any case, the above steps will cost you less than bottled water.  Its not an absolute crime to buy a bottle of water if you are away from home, but bringing your own is usually better and cheaper when you can.

The decaying matter in runoff and the  over application of lawn pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers found in runoff water can cause algae blooms, bottom vegetation blooms, and mass die offs of marine life. Birds and animals see  solid debris as food, and ingest it.  Cigarette butts and filters containing high levels of carcinogens are consumed by sea birds.  On one beach cleanup of a 2 mile stretch of beach in California, over 300,000 cigarette buts were picked up!   This pollution enters the food chain and ends up on our tables whether the source of the food is from land or sea. 

To impact matters, the photo decomposition of plastics in the water column simply makes smaller and smaller particles of plastics.  These get ingested by smaller animals in the food chain, spreading what ever toxins it carries lower in the food chain, thereby disseminating a broader infestation of our own food supply.  For our own survival we need to curb the amount of debris we produce, and thereby consume.  We need to re-school ourselves in the THREE R'S and tell others about it.  It's our mission.

REDUCE, RECYCLE, REUSE

An OpEd Piece by the webmaster

You are in the checkout line and the clerk asks you paper or plastic?   There are many choices we make in our lives every day.  Faced with this a true environmentalist would say use a re-usable bag made from recycled materials, and answer I brought my own.  Most of us do not do this, as evidenced by the huge numbers of plastic and paper bags used by the big chains.  We always don't do what is right, does that make us bad people?  No, it merely makes us average.  Like most people you want to be environmentally responsible, without turning into a fire breathing tree hugger, right. 

Which is better, well the answer is not clear.  At first blush the environmentally "better" answer would seem to be paper, right? The process of making a paper bag uses energy, which causes its own forms of pollution, acids and chemicals to enter the environment when it decomposes.  These acids and chemicals are used to break down the wood fibers into a pliable mush, and some residue remains in the paper.  That mush of wood fiber is then heated (more energy) to dry it into paper. 

The glues to seal the bag are mostly synthetic, and are petroleum based.  About 20 paper bags come from a small tree that is usually harvested when it is about 6 inches in diameter, and about 8 feet tall.  Your basic Christmas Tree.  So when you come home from the grocery store this week, think about how many trees you consumed just getting the already packaged stuff from the store to your car and then to the pantry. 

Plastic Bags use petroleum, and energy as well.  The plastic exists hundreds of years in the environment, and has the disadvantages mentioned above.  There is one hopeful answer.  There is a manufacturer who makes plastic bags out of corn.  They biodegrade and photodegrade  in about 6 months.  Perhaps a grass roots movement would allow major retailers to switch to this product.  That would give everyone a better choice. 

So to answer the question Paper or plastic, the "right" answer is no thank you I have brought my own.  The realistic answer I think is Paper, it seems to do less harm in the environment, at least paper bags decompose in a much shorter period of time.  More importantly, do not keep out moisture, like plastic does.  This will help decompose what ever is contained inside. 

This discussion isn't only for groceries.  Don't just think paper and plastic at the store, think about it for yard waste, when working on your lawn or in garden, and for refuse as well. 

There is no easy practical answer, just make it a conscious choice every time you make it.  The absolute wrong answer in my opinion is "whatever."