Plastic Pollution
Photo: Manan Vastsyayana
Unprecedented Plastic Pollution
When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide
By Claire Le Guern Lytle
The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.
Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic debris spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the the world's oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land.
In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature. Read More
Oil Pollution
View Pollution Gallery
Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989
Boy walks on beach in Cochin, southwest India.
Oil spills on the worlds beaches and in the worlds oceans
By Linda Pilkey-Jarvis
Beaches and river shorelines all over the world are at risk from oil spills. Spills are most likely to occur while oil is transported or transferred between oil tankers, barges, pipelines, refineries, and distribution or storage facilities. Spills may also occur during natural disasters (such as hurricanes), or through deliberate acts by countries at war, sunken ships, vandals, or illegal dumpers. Read More
Trash Pollution
Ocean Pollution... and Ocean Polluters
By Bekah Barlow
Did you know that it's legal to dump trash in the ocean? Yes, there are limitations for what you can and cannot dump. But it is perfectly acceptable to dump your raw sewage, paper, rags, glass, metal, bottles, or similar refuse, as long as you are at least 12 miles away from the nearest shoreline. It is not permissible to dump plastics anywhere. Read More
Surfing in / Pollution
Tar balls coat Indian beaches
Semisolid lumps of oil formed layers up to six inches deep (15 centimeters) on the renowned Goa beaches.
American Samoa law to ban plastic bags next year
A step in the right direction toward protecting the natural beauty of the islands and the native land, coast and sea creatures.
California Lawmakers Reject Plastic Shopping Bag Ban
The measure offered California an opportunity to emerge at the forefront of a global trend, however, lawmakers have rejected a bill seeking to ban plastic shopping bags.
Algae Blankets China Beaches
The algae bloom, or green tide, covered more than 170 square miles (440 square kilometers) of coasts south of Qingdao.
Health testing way down at California beaches
Health testing of California’s beaches has slumped to its lowest level since ocean monitoring became law more than a decade ago.
Historic Move, Canada to list BPA as Toxic
The Canadian government is in process of adding bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in thousands of everyday plastics, to its register of toxic substances.
Oil spill off Mumbai coast: tangible damage to mangroves
The oil slick from two ships colliding on August 7th off Mumbai coast, was found to have destroyed more than 300 hectares of mangroves and lapped the Elephanta coast.
All the Way to the Ocean
A book teaching kids and parents that sewage pollution runs “All the Way to the Ocean.”
9 Surprising Diseases You Can Catch at the Beach
While oiled beaches are making the most headlines this summer, there are numerous other contamination that can be found at the beach.
