The Pacific gyre has received a fair bit of attention in recent years – the great floating ‘seafill’ spirallying between the US and Japan. Last week scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute confirmed that there’s one in the Atlantic too. A new study compared 22 years worth of water samples and found a comparable [...]
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Marine plastic art
Steve McPherson creates art from washed up plastic on Britain’s beaches. The pieces, collected over 15 years, are sorted by colour and arranged. Lots more to see here. HT Plastiki
Break up with your old appliances
Until very recently, we had a drawer in our house with three old mobile phones, and in this we are not alone. Almost half of us have a unused mobile lying around somewhere, with or without its charger. A third of us have an unused camera, one in five has a computer they no longer use. 17% have [...]
Eco-rescue rivers game
Everyone loves a free online game, especially one with a point. Here’s one from National Geographic, as part of their RBC Blue Water Project, a ten-year project to protect Canada’s rivers. It’s part of National Geographic’s recent focus on fresh water. In Eco-Rescue, you pilot your little boat and chuck the hook overboard to scoop [...]
Speaking louder
Activists in Vancouver have fitted out a local dolphin sculpture with a giant six-pack ring to highlight the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. The Plastic Pollution Coalition has graced a series of statues with the rings, in a rather eye-catching bit of culture-jamming. In real life of course, the rings would be [...]
Green Up Luton video review
For the last three months Lou and I have been trying to reduce our energy use, cut our waste and change the way we travel, as part of the council’s Green Up Luton challenge. As the challenge draws to a close we’ve been feeding back to the council on how it went, and this is [...]
The zero waste challenge
Back in February, my wife and I signed up to Green Up Luton, a three month challenge that has seen us cutting our energy use, using more sustainable means of transport, and now cutting down our waste. We’ve had a series of tasks, but this week is the most ambitious yet, to try and aim [...]
Futurestates: Plastic bag
Ever seen a film narrated by a plastic bag? This is a really quite magnificent short film, directed by Ramin Bahrani and voiced by Werner Herzog. It tells the story of a plastic bag, cursed with immortality, searching for a resting place in the Pacific gyre. You might think that’s a tough concept to maintain [...]
5 gyres – the plastic waste in our seas
Remember our post about the trash continent spiralling in the Pacific? Apparently it’s one of five gyres where plastic and other rubbish collects, swirled together by ocean currents. It’s also a relatively unresearched problem. The heart of it is plastic waste, from the vast quantities of packaging and trinkets that we use and throw away [...]
The landfill prize 2010 – nominate your useless consumer items
Last year it was the motorised ice-cream cone. The year before, the ‘sonic’ electric toothbrush. It is the award for Britain’s cleverest rubbish, and it’s back to take your nominations for 2010. You might have thought that a global credit crunch would have dimmed our obsession with plastic trinkets, but apparently not. Walking into a [...]
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