Littering & Garbage

    This morning I saw a piece about a drive to clean up California on KPIX caption news. It only ran by once so I went online and did some research for about an hour, but found nothing. I did find this link

http://www.greenecoservices.com/taxpayer-cost-of-litter-in-san-francisco-35-8-million/

which gives a lot of interesting information on the subject and cost of littering in San Francisco. I don't have time to do any more hunting for this news as it takes away from the time I like to spend cleaning up my neighbourhood, something I do constantly! So much garbage is disposed of carelessly and no one seems to understand that a lot of it ends up in the Pacific gyre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch 
   
The gyre covers an area as large as the United States and ninety feet deep! Much of this garbage is plastic bags, bottles and wrapping, estimated to be around 20 pounds of debris for every square mile. All of this is dangerous. Animals get tangled in it and die. Its shelf life and toxicity lasts for hundreds of years. I tried to educate someone on this subject recently, where we are only a few miles from the Pacific. They looked at me as if I were mad and said, 'it's just on the street!' To which I answered, 'have you heard of the wind?' I hope they got the point! Filter cigarette butts are another hazard. They're toxic and fish eat them thinking they are food. If the fish aren't poisoned the filters cause great damage to their innards and kill them anyway. The tobacco is, of course, also a toxin which is easily absorbed through their skin. Trillions of cigarette butts are discarded yearly, especially since indoor smoking bans have gone into effect.

http://www.cigarettelitter.org/index.asp?pagename=un

    No matter how carefully garbage is disposed of there is far too much of it. I have nightmares about the whole planet turning into one great garbage heap. Cateura, Paraguay is one huge garbage heap or landfill with people living on and around it. They sift through all this refuse daily to sell it, use it in some way and to find food for themselves. They have developed a very inventive way to use the discarded tin and other substances by making musical instruments like violins. They have formed an Orchestra using these instruments which performed last August in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center. A documentary called Landfill Harmonic is set to be released in 2014.

http://www.iadb.org/en/news/announcements/2013-08-14/orchestra-of-recycled-instruments-of-cateura-paraguay,10547.html
   
This is an excellent example of reusing and repurposing garbage. Our throw away society has encouraged us all to think garbage just vanishes or that someone else will deal with it. We each need to pay a visit to a landfill to see how much we are throwing into our garbage cans. We all need to start using reusable canvas bags for our vegetables and for our shopping in general. We also need to start considering how we can reuse and repurpose before we thoughtlessly discard.
    We need to stop using throw away diapers which contribute a huge amount to the landfill and take 500 years to decompose. Kitty litter turns into cement when it dries. Your cat also inhales particles from the litter and ingests the same when cleaning paws etc. The best choice is environmentally friendly litter and reusable diapers. Keep in mind that throw away diapers and hardening kitty litter are designed to line the pockets of big business. Advertising encourages us to believe manufacturers are making our lives easier, which may be true in the short term, but it does nothing for the future of our children nor for our cats and it makes big business very rich while emptying our wallets. 

http://www.livestrong.com/article/149890-environmental-impact-of-disposable-diapers/

http://www.greenlivingonline.com/article/bad-kitty-litter-bad

    These are just a few, small examples of the effect of garbage and littering on our environment. There are many more that will occur to you as you look around and consider this problem. It's one that requires all our attention and needs our actions to reduce the negative effect on our planet. Thanks for paying attention, reducing your waste and, picking up all the discarded items you see and doing your bit to make our world better.