mom0nga

This excellent op-ed by Manuel Maqueda, cofounder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, explains why "ocean cleanup" ideas may actually be counterproductive in the long term. Some relevant excerpts:

If I had a dime for each brilliant idea to “clean up the “Garbage Patch” that has been forwarded to me over the last few years I would be a millionaire. These gyre cleanup machines, devices and foundations that emerge periodically are not going to happen. However they are likely to get lots of media attention –and distract from the real solutions.

These more or less sophisticated delusions and fantasies of massive offshore cleanups testify to how misunderstood our plastic pollution problem is, and how disconnected we are from nature in general, and from our oceans in particular... ...[a] key detail that seems to be consistently forgotten is that millions of tons of new plastic trash are entering the ocean as we speak.

A fairly old and conservative study estimated that 6.4 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean every year –adding up to over 100 million tons of plastic already polluting our oceans. Trying to clean this spiraling mess with ships or machines would be like trying to bail out a bathtub with a tea spoon… while the faucet is running!

What about stopping plastic pollution at the source? Wouldn’t that be a better use of our ingenuity, time and money? It also happens to be quite doable too.

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Let’s look at the real problem: every 5 minutes 2 million plastic beverage bottles are discarded in the US, enough to cover 8 football fields. That’s just for beverages, just in the US, which is 5% of the world’s population.  Just bottled water in the US alone generates enough discarded bottles in one week to circle the planet 5 times.

So we can create thousands of incredibly expensive and sophisticated machines to clean the ocean, but are unable to have a drink of water without generating millions of tons of plastic trash? The inconvenient truth is that we are using plastic, a toxic and very durable material that lasts centuries, for packaging and single use applications, that is to create things are designed to become garbage after a short use. And we are doing this at a massive scale to the benefit of a few corporations, to the detriment of all.

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The plastic industry loves distractions like the cleaning machines, because they put the focus on “cleaning up”, not on how their business of making disposable plastics is destroying the planet.

We have created a spiraling consumer culture and then turned it into a throwaway culture. Unless you stop this first, “cleanups” are futile.

Ultimately, in addition to the relentless activity of vested interest that promote these misconceptions, these stories get passed around because we all like to hear a whisper in our ear that says “it’s all going to be OK. Keep consuming and don’t think too much.”

The real solutions are to stop our addition to throwaway and disposable plastics, to make producers responsible for the entire life cycle of their products, and, ultimately, to embrace a culture of sustainability.

I love the work you guys do, especially your recent victory in getting United Egg Producers to end chick culling. I honestly believe it's one of the biggest victories for animal welfare in decades. Which brings me to my question: How do we break down the stereotypes surrounding animal welfare and those who advocate for improvements? (i.e. reforms are unrealistic, activists are "crazy" and "don't know what they're talking about", they're "pushing a radical agenda", etc.) One of the biggest challenges for me as an animal welfare advocate is the immediate pushback from people who reflexively assume that even the most modest welfare suggestions are somehow the result of extremist animal rights "propaganda".

It's called hooding, an interrogation technique which causes "disorientation, isolation, and dread" through sensory deprivation:

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, hooding is used to prevent people from seeing and to disorient them, and also to prevent them from breathing freely. Hooding is sometimes used in conjunction with beatings to increase anxiety as to when and where the blows will fall. Hooding also allows the interrogators to remain anonymous and thus to act with impunity. Moreover, if a group of prisoners is hooded, the interrogator can play them off against each other by pretending, for instance, that some of them are cooperating, which the prisoners will be unable to verify.

Even though hooding has long been considered a form of torture by the United Nations and likely violates the Geneva Convention, it was widely used by U.S. and British forces on Iraqi prisoners of war:

Hooding was discovered to have been applied in 2003 and 2004 to Iraqi prisoners who were held by American troops and questioned by intelligence officers from the British Secret Intelligence Service. Baha Mousa, an Iraqi civilian, died in British custody after being hooded and beaten.

Not feeling pain doesn't mean you can't be injured, which is why disorders like that can be extremely dangerous, especially in kids. According to Wikipedia, "it is common for people with the condition to die in childhood due to injuries or illnesses going unnoticed.

In other words, now there's genetic testing that can help doctors identify which medications are likely to work best for you, and which to avoid.