"vast wasteland"

On May 9th, 1961, 

the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, 

Newton Minow, shocked Americans 

by declaring commercial television programming to be a 

"vast wasteland."

W A S T E L A N D

wasteland documentary

plastic is trash that lasts forever

Earth Day: what are we doing to our home ?

click here to watch the full movie "Home"

playing with matches

plastic trash that lasts forever

The Joker

No More Plastic Water Bottles

The Huffington Post

by Adele Israel
Columnist, Community Activist
Posted: October 6, 2009

It is time to stop the insanity and you can help! I am referring to the madness of purchasing water in single-use, disposable plastic bottles. In spite of the convenience, this is a crazy concept and we must put an end to it.

You may ask, "What's so crazy about using individual bottles of water?" Pardon my candor, but not only is this habit unnecessary and ridiculously expensive, it is also wasteful and dependent on diminishing resources.

Let me share a few important facts:

1 Plastics are made by synthesizing certain chemicals found in fossil fuels like oil, natural gas or coal, to create chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms. These chains are enhanced with additional chemicals and highly-specialized manufacturing processes.

2 Plastic is forever. Although some types of plastic can be recycled, it does not ever completely biodegrade.

3 Plastic is lightweight and can travel many, many miles from where it was discarded.

4 Plastic water bottles account for more than one million tons of waste per year.

5 Plastics break down just enough to release toxins that can be hazardous to your health.

Bottled water is expensive. With most of us trying to trim our budgets, this is one expense to jettison immediately. Assuming you pay one buck for a 20-ounce bottle of water, that translates to $6.40 per gallon. Local Ute water costs less than 1/2 cent a gallon. We refill large reusable containers of water at Purified Water to Go and still only pay 35 cents a gallon. From an economic standpoint, individually bottled water is simply a ridiculous waste of money.

Then you have to take into account the amount of resources used to make all those bottles, fill them and transport them. The fossil fuel that is diverted into making water bottles for one year could run more than 100,000 cars during that same time period.

Which bring us full circle to the trash resulting from the bottled-water habit. Each year in the United States about 40 billion water bottles are thrown away, wherever "away" is. Fewer than 20 percent of water bottles actually get recycled.

Purchasing water in plastic, single-serve containers is a lose-lose situation. Stop buying this wasteful product and encourage others to follow your lead. Together we can stop the madness now. (read more)

Polymers Are Forever

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has one of the highest levels known of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column. As a result, it is one of several oceanic regions where researchers have studied the effects and impact of plastic photodegradation in the neustonic layer of water. Unlike debris, which biodegrades, the photodegraded plastic disintegrates into ever smaller pieces while remaining a polymer. This process continues down to the molecular level.

As the plastic flotsam photodegrades into smaller and smaller pieces, it concentrates in the upper water column. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms which reside near the ocean's surface. Plastic waste thus enters the food chain through its concentration in the neuston.

Some plastics decompose within a year of entering the water, leaching potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A, PCBs and derivatives of polystyrene. (read more)

Message in a Bottle

A Sea of Plastic

Just for worldwide consumption of bottled water in 2004 alone it took roughly 87.4 million barrels of oil. You can imagine that with statistics for 2008, we have a figure in the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil being used just to produce bottled water. Don't buy water in plastic bottles, water is free!

America and the world’s addiction to plastic doesn’t end there. Plastic bags take oil, just like plastic bottles to produce. Currently the U.S. consumes 100 billion plastic shopping bags in a year and worldwide consumption is estimated to be from 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags a year. That is roughly 1 million plastic bags a minute being consumed and less than 1% is recycled. If we legalize hemp we could make bags from a profitable and sustainable source and avoid wasting all that oil and energy making "trash that lasts forever."

I guess it's okay to pollute our waters now because, "we can $ell them clean water in a pla$tic bottle." Clean water is a right, not a commodity to be exploited. I bet next they will try to $ell us air and fire and dirt.

The Zippo

"Disposable" lighters are only one of the many items being made of plastic. "Trash that lasts forever" is the only phrase that can describe "disposable" plastic items. This "disposable" plastic finds its way into the ocean and collects in rotating ocean currents like the North Pacific Gyre, an area of concentrated plastic trash the size of Texas. The plastic to food ratio in this area is 6:1.


As you can see, this bird ingested several plastic "disposable" lighters along with other various plastic bottle tops and miscellaneous "disposable" plastic items. This bird died because it mistook our "disposable" plastic trash for food. Only 3.5 % of worldwide "disposable" plastic is recycled.


Zippo lighters are reliable and re-usable, a quality American made item not made of plastic. Buy a Zippo and stop using plastic "disposable" lighters and avoid buying "disposable" plastic products and packaging. It may even stop a bullet and save your life. "Disposable" plastic is the bane of our age.

Mother Earth

Thank you mother,

thank you for my life.