Week 7: Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I would like you to read/watch and comment on/discuss the presentation –Great Pacific Garbage Patch

You will find it at

http://onlineclasspjwstk-malgorzataswierk.blogspot.com/2013/11/great-pacific-garbage-patch.html

Comment on it here please.

Comments

What am I supposed to do with all my garbage then? I know it's hard for some to comprehend this, but we produce garbage, a lot of it. What do you expect us to do with it? Recycle? We are already doing basically as much recycle as we can, but most of what garbage is - is garbage. Burn it? Ecofreaks would destroy us all, and also it pollutes the air etc. Burry it somewhere deep down? We're already doing as much as we can but we're running out of places to hide all the garbage. Throwing it into the sea? As You can see - a big no no from ecofreaks. Then, would someone explain, what would you expect the humanity to do, to stop producing garbage? I don't see any SANE solution.
Cheers

17 November 2013 at 18:52

Tomek Niezgoda said…

There is a lot of talk about this problem but we don’t do enough. I have a feeling we won’t take drastic actions unless it starts affecting our lives directly. There was a documentary on National Geographic about how huge piles of garbage containing only natural materials don’t dissolve. The pressure inside those piles is so big that even very old newspapers are preserved in an almost perfect state. It’s not just about plastic but also about maintaining all the garbage we produce and producing less of it. Some parts of the world get too little and some get too much. Distribution of resources is very uneven and causes people to throw away more in rich countries because they can afford it.

17 November 2013 at 19:55

Unknown said…

We can’t really stop producing garbage and this would be the only solution… We are recycling, utilizing recycled products as much as we can but it is still not enough. Population is growing and with it garbage production. We can only slow down the process but we will never stop it.

17 November 2013 at 19:58

Unknown said…

A very good point Armand. Actually i cannot say anything more. I have just closed the topic. Only thing that we can do is make the science discovery be done faster and hope that someone will develop some system of utilization that will just annihilate garbage that cannot be recycle. I've also heard about the idea of sending garbage info space. That sound promissing

17 November 2013 at 20:16

Sylwia said…

Somehow I agree with Armand. There are plenty of people, who take care of our enviroment. They put a lot of effort to prevent destroying life on Earth. What's more in my opinion we can't be directly responsible of problems, which take place far away from us, for others people decisions. It is important to be aware of problems and follow some basic rules such as do not litter, use energy wisely etc. and that helps on local scale (for example for mentioned plastic bags issue). But to me actions of particular, regular person can't change anything on global scale, can't change anything about water polution. However companies and even whole countries have definitly bigger influence on it. Unfortunately for such organization being eco friendly usually means having bigger costs and that is what counts for them. People create laws to prevent pollution and there are organizations, which should limits illegal action. But on the other hand we also have the right to live on Earth, so we can't ban everything. We need production for our development. No one wants to go back to Stone Age. Personally I do not know what I can do about it more...

17 November 2013 at 21:37

Natalia said…

I agree with Tomek that people don't think daily about enviroment because its pollutions don't affect them, but when it finally does it will be to lat to tak any action. We could minimize industrial pollutions by restrictions for example: company which produces plastic bottles have to get their 80% of their sources from reuse or another one which cuts forest would have to plant as many trees as they have cuted. What can we do to stop this from happening? We could start from our local enviroment by not letting others to throw trash on the street or by sorting of waste and reusing things rather than throwing them. If you have something like old furniture - don't throw it away but sell or give away to charity, so another person could use it. I know this are small things but we have to start from something.

17 November 2013 at 22:43

alt_pl said…

Enviroment... I think that the biggest problem lies in future planning. To be honest tons of garbage don't bother us, but it's true nature will be shown for next generations. I come from one of the 'green lungs' of Europe - Masuria and I am really annoyed by fact how people from 'big cities' ( especially from Warsaw ) don't care for forests and lakesides being clean. Try to imagine all thrash left in my region lying on main street in capital city...

17 November 2013 at 23:11

Seisyll said…

As far as I remember, this problem is solving out itself. This floating waste is giving birth to bacterias which eat the garbage. I don't recall if those bacterias eat everything inside this waste, but this is still a pretty big discovery, which scientists still can't explain. This might be a big step in solving our little garbage problem. If not, there is still one possibility.

[img]http://theinfosphere.org/images/4/4c/Giant_Ball_of_Garbage.jpg"[/img]

17 November 2013 at 23:23

lukasz-anwajler said…

Maybe we just should throw away garbage into space... What can we do about it? We can split our trash into different bins, not waste our energy etc. Anyway, I think it's very difficult to change the situation without involving politicians, because people are lazy and some of them will only act as they should if they are forced to do so, because it requires more work from them.

17 November 2013 at 23:36

Patryk Długaszek said…

We knew that habitat for change among human kind is requisite, even necessary but it's difficult operation and may bring little effects. All this movies show how people relate to nature and also forgetting that we are a part of it and injuring nature we injure himself.
There is many new ways for disposal a garbage, for example: to Space (but through this kind of action we make another scrap-heap?) or concreting garbage's under the ground. Good idea is invet some of ecological replacement for example bag (as it shows one of these movies). Of course, "ecological fabric" I don't mean wood or something like this, because for me cutting trees for "ecological paper bags" is this same how building another non ecological factory for coal. For me we should use some nature textile fabric and using one bag many times. Of course now we talking about plastic bags but it is much more toxic garbage's in our World.
Nowadays, we rather don't change older humans habits much but we should try start educating younger generation which in the near future could change much more.

18 November 2013 at 20:53

Sergio Cosentino said…

The problem of garbage is not an easily solvable one. I mean, societies are bound to produce garbage and the number of humans on the world is overwhelming. I think that sooner or later people will come up with an extraordinary method of handling garbage, but until than I think we just have to manage. Of course I don't think nothing should be done in the matter. It would be a good thing if people tried to do all they can to help with handling the garbage problem. I think that garbage segregation is the very least that should be done everywhere.

24 November 2013 at 18:54

English Conversation Course

Search This Blog