[photo credit Erin Lafferty]
The Ocean Cleanup
It’s estimated that there are about 5 trillion pieces of plastic trash in the ocean, swishing around with the current, meeting up with other pieces of plastic and forming groups like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (located between Hawaii and California). This amount of plastic kills the ocean, kills the wildlife that lives in the ocean, and will eventually kill us fish-eating humans if we don’t do something about it.
Enter The Ocean Cleanup project that has been working on a way to relieve this impossible situation. Using advanced technologies and ocean currents, The Ocean Cleanup hopes to be able to capture half of the plastic in the Pacific Garbage Patch within five years and remove it to offshore facilities. The first system is going to be deployed in mid-2018. Wanna join in the fun? Contribute skills. Contribute funds. Or just contribute good thoughts. Let’s clean up the ocean!
Co-hosts for this month are Shilpa Garg, Michelle Wallace, Mary Giese, Dan Antion and Simon Falk, and the rules (okay, they’re just guidelines) are as follows:
1. Keep your post to below 500 words, if possible.
2. On the last Friday of every month, link to a human news story on your blog, one that shows love, humanity and brotherhood.
3. Join us on the last Friday of each month in sharing that news. Don’t worry if your story can cut it, we love all kinds of stories as long they transcend religion and politics, and take a deep dive into what it is that makes us human.
4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD Badge on your sidebar, and help spread the word on social media. Tweets, Facebook shares, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag throughout the month are welcome.
5. Read and comment on each others’ posts, make news friends and keep the old (something about silver and gold) by getting to know your fellow #WATWB compadres.
6. To signup, Click here and add your link in the WE ARE THE WORLD Linky List below.
pjlazos 4.27.18
Green Life Blue Water 
What a wonderful and necessary undertaking. Shared this post with my boy.
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I work with a man at the Global Water Alliance who is Dutch and knows the founder and said he came up with the idea in high school so, yes, show your boy, Diana. 😘
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Speaking of lovely posts…beautiful image and beautiful words, so very important right now in this “toss it and forget” society. This is going to sound odd, but I’ve been talking about oceans with my kids thanks to McDonald’s. Seriously! Their current happy meal has little plush animals for the toy; my kids got sea turtles the other week. We got some books from the library about sea turtles, and they learned how nets and garbage can ruin where sea turtles lay eggs, or get them hurt in the ocean. I wasn’t expecting the kids to want to learn about the environment after a happy meal, but I’m glad it worked!
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Ahhh, I love it when the kids get it and this generation and those behind them are so much more clued in than we were. Here’s to raising strong, sensible, and aware individuals. 😘🙏 You’re doing a great job over there, Jean, and let me be the first to say happy Mother’s Day. 😂
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Thank you! xxxxxx
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Thanks for your post on this important subject and also for following my blog!
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My pleasure.
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Thanks Mr/Mrs for accepting and following my blog.
I’m available to read your post at my convenient time.
You have such an interesting topic I will love to read in
your blog.
I still remain the simple blogger…..
#PATRICKSTORIES
Peace ✌and Love ❤
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👍
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You welcome dear friend.
You can also check on my blog for the latest post. You will find touching and inspirational one there.
#PATRICKSTORIES
Peace ✌and Love ❤
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I saw a really interesting piece on 60 Minutes about how seaweed farming can help to deacidify the oceans. Great post!
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Cool! 😎 Every little change helps! Thanks for stopping in Raimey.
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The concern over plastics has become widespread, finally—let’s hope it’s not too late. Here in Curaçao, in the beaches where I walk with the dogs (places with few to no people) tons and tons of plastic wash up every day. We’re a small island, so recycling is all done offshore (and is expensive), but even so several organizations organize clean-up drives and weekends, and the difference has been huge. It’s encouraging that many restaurants no longer serve straws automatically, that more and more of their supplies are being traded for recyclable or renewable ones. Maybe we can still save the world—I mean that quite literally 🙂
Thanks so much for your visit over at Damyanti’s for my guest post (and sorry, again, for the link mix-up, haha—I’ve been laughing about that since then), and for your interest in the book! If you do get a copy for your sister (there’s free shipping tonight, but it’s expiring in like an hour), I’d love to know if she likes it and any feedback she’s willing to share. Us rescuers have to stick together, hehe.
Hope you had a fantastic weekend, P. J.!
Guilie @ Life In Dogs
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Oh, no, just read this now! That’s okay. I don’t mind paying shipping. I’ll have it sent right to her. I’ve not been home to order it but will do so tomorrow!
Good to know your island home recycles, even if it is expensive. Maybe others will start taking charge as well.
Thanks, Guilie. Have a great day!❤️
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I started using bamboo toothbrushes and gave up plastic straws after reading an article about plastics in the ocean. I recently read another article about dental floss! I hadn’t even considered that could be a problem too, but apparently it can and because it’s so strong, tough, and non-biodegradable, it’s dangerous for marine life. This ocean cleanup project is a great first step. I hope the next step can be finding a way to recycle all of this plastic into something useful, or otherwise dispose of it so that it can become part of the earth again.
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Terrific! And where do you get bamboo toothbrushes, Karen?
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From Amazon.com, unfortunately. It’s too complicated to figure out the cost of delivery, etc. If I get them shipped with other things, hopefully there isn’t extra gas being spent on getting them to me, but in aggregate, if everyone did it, there would be. But again, if everyone did it, there would be enough demand that maybe CVS would start carrying them too.
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That’s the problem with a lot of this stuff. Market demand isn’t high enough. We really just need to change the way we think about it though.
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great post. Ocean clean-up is a huge challenge but I can think of no better cause. No oceans-no life. It’s that simple. Life starts with micro-oganisms that are swallowing minuscule plastic fragments thinking they are food.They once they die everything collapses and its Goodnight Vienna for everyone!
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Goodnight Vienna, indeed! While I never heard the expression, I take your meaning. What’s it from, Paul?
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Hi Pam It is actually the title of a Ringo Starr LP, the cover showing Michael Rennie in a still from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I don’t know the origin but I know it means curtains; everything is over; that’s all folks! According to https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/7/messages/661.html
“A Dictionary of Catch Phrases American and British,” has an entry for it: “good night, Vienna” comes from the title of a romantic operetta… Its main song was “Good night, Vienna” (you city of a million melodies)’… As a [catch phrase] it can be put to a variety of different uses-often apparently contradictory. “If the officer catches us up to this, it’s Good Night, Vienna, for the lot of us.” Its appeal and currency are due only to the fact that it’s mildly pleasing to the tongue in a racy sort of way and bounces quite happily on the ear of the listener.”
It’s just something I have always said. Pxx
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That’s terrific, Paul, and now I think I need to use it. Thanks for enlightening me! (And sorry for the slow response. For some reason this message was in my spam folder.)
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A fab initiative. We shouldnt have created this mess in the first place, but now, we must get our act together and do it for our marine life and our future generations.
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So true, Shilpa.🙏
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There is such need for this, and it’s exciting to know there are initiatives in place and prototypes being tested. I think a much-needed part of this work IS to celebrate the undertakings and the successes and continue publicizing the issues. Tackling problems as huge as cleanup of our oceans is going to take massive commitment, tremendous innovation, and an extreme alteration of the way we currently do things. And we all need to step forward as part of the solution.
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So very true, Deborah. Big changes start with small changes from each individual. Have a great day! Pam
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I’m excited that we have a way to start cleaning this up 🙂
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Me, too, Michele! Hopefully governments will jump on board with grants and other funding. I don’t know how lucrative plastics recycling is. They need more markets for it.
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“The first system is going to be deployed in mid-2018?” SCARY!
There is great urgency with regards to eco-friendly living and sustainability, yet man still ignores the call! We can’t even get the basics right… 😦
Writer In Transit
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But some are trying so there’s hope!
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This is a much-needed clean up for the worlds’ oceans. It is amazing to me how humans have been so disrespectful to the environment over the years. This is what gives us life, so why not take good care of it?
Thank you for sharing this initiative and for participating in this month’s #WATWB.
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Thanks, Mary!🙏
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Great initiative… Plastic is a huge enemy when it comes to marine species. Lots of wahles have recently passed away due to ingestion of plastic. So sad.
Thanks for raising awareness, dear Pam.. & well done, the Ocean Cleanup project!.
Love & best wishes 🙂
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Thanks, Amalia!
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Hi PJ = as they’re finding plastic in fish now … I wonder how long before it is found in us … we do really need to do something fast and have all countries on board – a difficult task … but give responsibility to the locals that will help, as they will benefit – one hopes … cheers Hilary
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Well if we’re eating fish that’s eaten plastic we’ll soon have it to! 😩😩😩 So sad. Thanks, Hilary.
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The plastic trashand oceans…Dianne get me started xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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🤪😍 🌊
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that should have read ‘clean up’ ..
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I’ll take a clean in (like a teach-in), too!
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Thanks Pam – great clean in progress! We can all do our bit. What a beautiful photograph!
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Thanks, Susan. No Bedouin’s there!
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We kill our mother when we pollute the ocean.
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If only everyone would realize it, Cindy. You see the interconnection because of all the beautiful pictures of waterfowl you take, but some people never think beyond the shoreline and it’s tough to bridge the gap of understanding. So we keep plugging along, right?!😘
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