Archive for ocean pollution
The War on Plastic Vol 4 – California contemplates plastic bag ban
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome to part four of an occasional series that I’ve titled ‘the war on plastic’ as I’ve made an unofficial decision that doing all possible to reduce the waste associated with plastic products is a huge part of our environmental responsibility. The war takes on many guises, from recycling to reduction, more educated consumption and the development of suitable and affordable alternatives. Few things are as synonymous with a society built upon convenience and disposable products as the continued rise of plastics. I have no debate that convenience is appealing but at what cost? That’s one of the topics we’ll continue to tackle in this series, for more information and the original post please visit here.
More good news in the battleground this month from the state of California that I feel happy and obliged to share. Over 500 California businesses have signed on in support of a plastic bag ban in the state.
The signatures have been collected by Environment California as many businesses elect to support cities in enacting bans of plastic bags. If approved city egislation would ban certain retailers from automatically offering plastic bags at the cash register. Environment California is a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization. They draw on 30 years of success in tackling the state’s top environmental problems. The companies that have signed represent a healthy cross-section of California business, many small retailers and restaurants, boutiques and convenience stores. Gina Goodhill from Environment California adds:
“From a business point of view, banning plastic bags makes sense, and these 500 signatures prove it”
Logic suggests that a decision that has economic and environmental benefits should be met with little resistance. Single use plastic bags costs retailers many hundreds of millions to provide, a cost that retailers of course currently cover. In truth of course those costs are transferred to the customer who doesn’t really need the bag in the first place. A typical supermarket is estimated to spend $20,000 to $70,000 on single use plastic bags at checkout. More and more retailers are promoting special savings for shoppers who use their own bag, or moving toward making sure a customer has to specifically request. Significantly The California Grocers Association, has firmly placed its weight behind the bill. The focus in an economy still in very slow recovery is firmly cost savings, perhaps not drawing on the aesthetic of plastic bag litter (so often ultimately destined via storms drains and rivers to the ocean) and ocean pollution as much as they could but still the proposition looks well supported.
Single use plastic bags of course not free, at around 3 to 3 1/2 cents per bag – the amount is being transferred into the shelf costs of the products you purchase. If you shop at 4 establishments per week and acquire 10 bags a week, those 500+ bags will cost you an extra $15-$20 per year. Even that quantity of bags may actually be much lower than the reality based on statistics. These numbers made my eyes bulge and inefficiency and waste becomes a vicious circle; in California an estimated 19 billion single use bags are used annually which in turn result in the state spending $25 million each year to clean up and landfill all of the bags. Once again you can guess where that $25 million has to come from.
Arguments against the ban suggest customers will be too greatly inconvenienced and the costs of reusable bags is prohibitive. In which case how did we cope before plastic bags? I went to two stores yesterday and was asked ‘do you think you’ll need a bag’ – of course not…and I somehow coped. More soon plastic battlers!
Learn far more about Environment California via their official site.
Tags: california amendment ab 1998, california considers plastic bag ban, California Grocers Association, cost of plastic to environment, eco-friendly ideas, Environment California, environmental responsibility, green legistlation, ocean pollution, reduce plastic bags, reduce use of plastic bags, war on plasticRecently on a Tuesday morning the Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach was gripped by the vision of hundreds of thousands of dead fish in the harbor of the town. Initial fears and internet chatter speculated that this was another environmental disaster that we needed to look into, why would so many fish (in this case sardines) suddenly show up in one place at one time but also sadly dead? The vast majority of King Harbor was silver with sardines filling every available inch of the surface, along the harbor wall and against the jetties the fish were stacked up below the surface too as deep as 18 inches in some areas. There was initial panic that some new hazard existed just off the California coast which was now bringing in the gloomy results for the locals to see. In the past some of this coastline has struggled with poor water quality but has made huge improvements over the last 15 years, officials wondered if the sardines reflected a change to the bad old days.
It turns out that the giant school of sardines, estimated at over 1,000,000 dead in the harbor had essentially suffocated trying to escape a major storm further out to sea. A natural occurrence but nevertheless one that demonstrates the impact of what scientists term a dead ocean.
Redondo Beach, CA (AP Photo/Alex Gallardo)
Following some research after the findings on Tuesday authorities declared that the incident was entirely due to nature. A very strong storm was churning off the coast the previous weekend bringing extremely strong wind gusts that made for a violent ocean along the California coast. This fact coupled with it being the peak season for well migration meant that a huge school of sardines headed for shore, or more specifically looking for a protected harbor which they found in Redondo Beach. The problem being the harbor is not big enough, deep enough or has enough movement to create sufficient oxygen for its new guests. The sardines ended up in King Harbor where four marinas house nearly 1500 boats. The water in the harbor is not that deep, only 22 feet at high tide and did not provide enough oxygen for such a huge influx. Residents had noticed fish struggling earlier in the weekend but the population continued to swell due to the weather offshore. Studies of the water in the harbor showed that oxygen levels in the water on the day of the disaster were more than five times lower than what is considered critically low. The sardines had no chance really.
In an area that relies on tourism the town perform cleanup operations as quickly as possible with truckloads of the former sardines being taken away. While on this occasion event was entirely natural scientists point out that some regions of the ocean are showing increasingly lower oxygen rates due to decaying algae. The mass of man-made pollutants added to the oceans is always heightened by heavy rains which washes more than normal levels into coastal vicinities. In bays and harbors where the water is more still the oxygen rates lower and the impact on fish rapidly mounts. Experts have shown that certain areas in our oceans due to currents have gradually transformed into dead zones that don’t provide the necessary oxygen or nutrients required to support marine life. Most famous of all is the North Pacific region commonly known as the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, even the animals that survive in such regions are taking on high levels of toxins which then infiltrate the food chain as they in turn are eaten.
Tags: dead fish california coast, dead fish in redondo beach, dead fish los angeles, dead ocean, eco-friendly lifestyle, king harbor, marine life, ocean dead zones, ocean pollution, pacific trash vortex, plastic bags, plastics in the ocean, pollurion in the pacific, redondo beach, stainless steel water bottles, sustainable practices, water pollutionNew cruse ship sewage ban for 2011
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve never been one who really enjoys an extended period of time in a confined space therefore going on a cruise has never held particular appeal to me. I’ve been on ferries crossing the Irish Sea and the North Sea to visit Ireland and Europe but always using the ship as a method of transport not as a holiday. Naturally without my participation the cruise industry is still huge and growing on an annual basis. While I lived in Los Angeles I marveled at the size of the magnificent ships harboured in San Pedro waiting like sentinels to take their cargo of two or three thousand holidaymakers down the Pacific Coast to various Mexican and Central American ports of call. I never realized until reading a recent article that sewage from these huge vessels was not previously restricted for dumping in coastal waters.
Happily new federal regulations will now ban all cruise ships and larger commercial ships from discharging their sewage within 3 miles of the California coastline according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The laws come into play in 2011 and it is estimated that the results will keep approximately 20,000,000 gallons of sewage away from coastal waters annually. In addition to cruise ships commercial boats in excess of 300 tons will also be subject to the same rulings. The US Coast Guard will also have the authority to charge vessels with sewage violations. Naturally enough when a cruise ship with sometimes as many as 4000 passengers takes to the seas it becomes the equivalent of a small city offshore and all the resultant pollution that goes with that many residents.
Many cruise lines are stating that the ban will have little impact as they already have internal policies which reflect an earlier law that was passed in 2005 with many operators now keeping sewage in large tanks to either dump further out at sea or transferred to wastewater treatment facilities. Nevertheless the impact on commercial vessels should also help the water quality on the Pacific coast that has continued to deteriorate in recent decades. The law makes perfect sense especially when stringent laws have already been passed to reduce runoff from rivers and sewage centers and pipes that are onshore.
I still don’t think it’s enough to make me want to jump on a 10 day cruise and have dinner with strangers every evening but it’s good to see the EPA holding the cruise industry to task when it comes to environmental matters. Surely the best procedure of all would result in banning the discharge of sewage anywhere on the seas rather than just the coastal barrier that has now been more properly enforced. One step at a time but it’s most certainly a step in a positive direction.
Tags: California coastal waters, coastal sewage ban, coastal sewage restrictions, cruise industry and pollution, cruise ship industry, cruise ship sewage, CSR cruise industry, environmental laws, Environmental protection agency, environmental regulations, EPA, ocean pollution, Ocean sewage, planet forward, polluted ocean, river pollution, sewage, sewage discharge, sewage in the ocean, US Coast Guard, wastewater management, wastewater treatment
