Plastics Pollution in Our Oceans . . .

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Emerald Sea

Posted in BBC today.... Plastic pollution: Scientists' plea on threat to ocean giantshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42920383

Here ➥ Plastic pollution: Scientists' plea on threat to ocean giants - BBC News

[serol1971]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Here ➥ Plastic pollution: Scientists' plea on threat to ocean giants - BBC News

I just completed an article on environmental impact of a sailing trip as many of us do it regularly. I hope to contribute to this discussion and it is not only the plastics in the ocean that is the problem.

See my article on https://www.erol.at/logbook/index.ph...t_type=message

Feedback more than welcome!

[Pete7]

Interesting article and thank you for producing it. However, how do you get 2.68kgs of CO2 out of 1 litre of petrol which must weigh less than 1kg?

Pete

[serol1971]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Interesting article and thank you for producing it. However, how do you get 2.68kgs of CO2 out of 1 litre of petrol which must weigh less than 1kg?

Pete

It is the oxide (O2) that an engine needs to burn a liter of diesel (C). It takes O2 out of the air. And it needs a quite many of cubic meters of air to burn one liter of diesel which leads to the average relation 1 L Diesel => 2.68 kg CO2.

[hpeer]

To make CO2 you mix one unit of cabin with 2 units of Oxygen.

Carbons molecular weight is 12 so a unit weighs 12 somethings.
Oxygens molecular weight is 16 so 2 units weigh 32 somethings. M

If we are talking pounds 12 pounds of carbon, from fuel, mixes with 32 pounds of oxygen from air to make 44 pounds of CO2.

That’s how it works.

(hope i did hat right, too many years since HS chemistry).

[Pete7]

Well you learn something new every day, thanks

Pete

[QuickST]

I've just returned from my granny's area and the seashore there is totally rubbished with plastic and other trash... We try to clean out the shore near us but it's not enough. It's so sad! That place was such beautiful when I was a kid. I think those plastic bags and bottles should be banned everywhere. I even started using a bamboo toothbrush instead of the plastic one to reduce the usage of plastic. I hate those people who leave waste on the beach! Humanity should change something...

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by QuickST

I've just returned from my granny's area and the seashore there is totally rubbished with plastic and other trash... We try to clean out the shore near us but it's not enough. It's so sad! That place was such beautiful when I was a kid. I think those plastic bags and bottles should be banned everywhere. I even started using a bamboo toothbrush instead of the plastic one to reduce the usage of plastic. I hate those people who leave waste on the beach! Humanity should change something...

I see you come from Kiev, were do you think the rubbish comes from on the beach near your Grannies house,?

This bamboo tooth brush you have chosen to use for its green credentials, was it made locally to you or did it need to be shipped thousands of miles to Kiev for you to use and was it wrapped up in cardboard and plastic as Amazon normally do?

What was your real motive for posting a link to a tooth brush on a sailing forum, are you a spammer perhaps?

Pete

[GordMay]

According to a UN report published in June, the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled stands at 90.5% – a figure so alarming that it was declared the winning international statistic of 2018 by the Royal Statistical Society.

➥ https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/ha...=1&isAllowed=y

➥ https://www.theguardian.com/culture/...istics-of-year

[RobD527]

Back in 1990, I was in the USMC and we went on a tank ship from Okinawa to S. Korea.
In the middle of the night, they woke us up to form a human chain to throw hundreds of bags of garbage overboard (all of it and yes plastic)

Not sure if they are still doing it but I can't imagine how much junk and plastic went into the water from the United States Government

[GordMay]

Plastic Legacy: Humankind's Trash Is Now a New Rock (Plastiglomerate)
Invented just after the turn of the twentieth century, the mass production of the synthetic organic polymers of plastic only began in the 1950s. Bakelite®, Styrofoam®, and Nylon® gave way to thermoplastic polymers, which could be molded and melted and remolded. Since 1950, there has been more than 6 billion metric tons of plastic produced.

Research* shows that melted plastic trash, on beaches, can sometimes mix with sediment, basaltic lava fragments, and organic debris (such as shells) to produce a new type of rock material.

The new material, called plastiglomerate, will forever remain in Earth's rock record, and in the future, may serve as a geological marker for humankind's impact on the planet.

In situ plastiglomerate is more rare than the clastic variety, and forms when "plastic melts on rock and becomes incorporated into the rock outcrop, and the melted plastic can also get into the rock vesicles, or cavities.
Clastic plastiglomerates, on the other hand, are loose rocky structures, composed of a combination of basalt, coral, shells, woody debris and sand that have been glued together by melted plastic.
The new material is far denser than plastic-only particles. This suggests plastiglomerates have a much greater potential to become buried, and preserved in the rock record, than normal plastic debris, and that future generations of scientists will be able to look into the planet's geological record and find the plastiglomerates.

“An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record” ~ by Patricia L. Corcoran, Charles J. Moore, & Kelly Jazvac
* ➥ https://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/...173-24-6-4.htm

More ➥ https://www.e-flux.com/journal/78/82...astiglomerate/

Photos ➥ Kelly Jazvac Plastiglomerates

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by GordMay

...Since 1950, there has been more than 6 billion metric tons of plastic produced...

....melted plastic trash, on beaches, can sometimes mix with sediment, basaltic lava fragments, and organic debris (such as shells) to produce a new type of rock material.

The new material, called plastiglomerate, will forever remain in Earth's rock record, and in the future, may serve as a geological marker for humankind's impact on the planet.

In situ plastiglomerate is more rare than the clastic variety, and forms when "plastic melts on rock and becomes incorporated into the rock outcrop, and the melted plastic can also get into the rock vesicles, or cavities.

Clastic plastiglomerates, on the other hand, are loose rocky structures, composed of a combination of basalt, coral, shells, woody debris and sand that have been glued together by melted plastic.
The new material is far denser than plastic-only particles. This suggests plastiglomerates have a much greater potential to become buried, and preserved in the rock record, than normal plastic debris...

And, for reference purposes only, at an average density of 1 metric ton/cu mt, evenly spread over the earth's surface, would produce a layer .002" thick; 2 mils or about the thickness of a sheet of typing paper. Another perhaps illustrative metric would be 6 billion tonnes (at the same density) would be about 1.5 cubic miles (volume of the Earth - roughly 268 billion cu mi).

Would (probably) be a better place for it than distributed in the water column or buried in land fills or washed up on once-pristine beaches...

Would certainly be a better place for it than in the atmosphere (the carbon in unburned fossil fuels is sequestered in the plastic) , but the numbers are skewed the other way. If we've used about 1.5 trillion barrels (40 gallon bbl), or barrels equivalent, that equals about 20 cu miles (if my math is right, but it should be close enough) or only about 7.5 percent for plastics production.

And of course only a tiny amount is 'plastoglomerated' anyway...

[StuM]

> The new material, called plastiglomerate, will forever remain in Earth's rock record,

Pure supposition!

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by StuM

Quoting GM, who said: The new material, called plastiglomerate, will forever remain in Earth's rock record,
Replies: Pure supposition!

Given it’s resistance to chemical weathering and mechanical abrasion, and its high density, plastiglomerate (and its variants) have the potential to become buried, preserved, and form part of the rock record.
Moreover, given their coastal occurrence, plastiglomerate might be washed out to sea during storm events and become part of the benthic sedimentary record.
Thus, along with global deposition of combustion-related products (for example, fly ash), and collapse and burial of building materials (concrete and asphalt), plastiglomerate joins an ever-expanding group of long-lived (if not 'forever') human impacts.

These remnants or casts of the initial plastic products will remain fused into the lithosphere as Earth’s future rock record and can be used as a marker of the Anthropocene, when human activities began to rapidly alter the Earth and its atmosphere. Although its ultimate fate, in the rock record, remains unknown, because of its youth, in terms of geological time, plastiglomerate represents a powerful icon of human impacts.

So if, by “supposition”, you mean: something believed to be true without proof - then, no, not mere supposition - tho' with, perhaps, a small touch of hyperbole.

[psk125]

Originally Posted by Captain Bill

I personally don't have an issue with the flimsy plastic bags as they are easily recycled. I recycle 100% of the plastic bags I get from the grocery stores. The fact that other people just disgard them is an issue.

. [/FONT][/COLOR]

Unfortunately, the flimsy plastic bags are not easily recycled. They may be recyclable, and even say that on them, but actually recycling them is a problem that putting them into the recycle bin does not solve. We went to the recycling center in Shelton, CT, that handles the 15 towns in our region. It operates in a single stream setup: everything recyclable goes into a blue bin that gets picked up and it all gets sorted out at the recycling center. We saw mountains of glass shards, bales of paper, newspaper, cardboard, and plastic bottles of different colors. Plastic bags? No. The Supervisor explained to us that plastic bags get shredded in the sorting machinery and jam it - much like a line wrapping ‘round your prop. Bags are ripped open by hand, their contents dumped out, and the bags are tossed into the “burn” pile. (There’s a scrubber on the stack, and the heat is used to generate electricity.) Our state just began a program that aims to phase out single-use plastic bags and most people are quite pleased with it.