Many of us grew up in the Tupperware age. Our parents’ fridges were
full of plastic food storage containers, and we even kept plastic
margarine tubs for storing leftovers!
A lot has changed since then, and more and more research is showing
that plastic leaches chemicals into our food and drinks, which can harm
our health. Plastics like Bisphenol A (BPA) and Bisphenol S (BPS) have
been shown to have hormone-mimicking, estrogenic properties. BPA has even been linked to breast cancer tumors. Unfortunately this seems to happen quite a lot, a new fabulous product is introduced and as the years go on and the research that should have taken place before being sold to the public, takes place they find that it is not so wonderful after all.While BPA has been taken out of many plastics due to consumer demand, it
has been routinely replaced with BPS, which may be even more toxic. Studies
show that it’s now found in 81% of blood tested and that it can lead to
ailments such as diabetes, obesity, asthma, birth defects, and cancer. Just because something is labeled BPA-free doesn’t mean it’s
safe.
Safest: Glass Storage Containers
If you’ve been working on your green resolutions
this year, choosing safer food storage containers should be on your
list. The safest choice for food storage is glass. A couple of years
ago, glass food storage containers
were hard to come by and expensive. Prices have come down a lot and
major manufacturers are adding glass storage to their lines, so it’s
much more accessible.
Look for brands that are made in the Europe or the United States because some glass
imported from China has been shown to contain lead or cadmium
(especially if there is paint or enamel involved). Two brands include Pyrex and Anchor Hocking. Duralex is made in
France and Lifefactory is made in Europe, so they should also be safe.
Both Ball and Kerr canning jars are made in the U.S. and are a great
choice for food storage as well. You can check your existing glass for
lead with LeadCheck Swabs.
Safer Than Plastic: Stainless Steel or Silicone
If you don’t want to make the switch to glass but still want
something that’s considered safer than plastic, you can choose 304-grade
stainless steel or silicone. Neither of these materials should leach chemicals into your food.
Avoid High-Risk Plastics
While it’s best to avoid plastic food storage containers altogether,
there are safer choices if you don’t have the means to make the switch
yet. If you look at the bottom of your plastic food storage containers
and they have a 2, 4, or 5, those are generally recognized as safe for food and drink. If any of your containers have a3, 6, or 7, those should be disposed of because they are considered high-risk plastics.
If you’re going to use one of the safer plastics, it’s best not to
store acidic or greasy foods in them. Also be sure to throw out any
plastic containers that are scratched up, worn badly, or are cloudy. And
don’t use them in the microwave or dishwasher for improved safety.
If you need to dispose of plastic containers it is best to take them to the local recycling station, I take all my bits and bobs to the one on the Poligono in Ciutadella, they have special containers in which you can leave them.
Everyone has been complaining about how this is in fact possible because the electricity and gas companies are supposed to be regulated by the government here in Spain. It is an absolute disgrace, but what I find more incredible is the amount of Whatsapp action messages to turn off all the electric for 20 minutes
I have been involved in a yearly action to ask people to do one simple thing for Earth Hour (normally in March) which is to turn off the lighting in their homes for one Hour. The pathetic excuses I have heard in the past are absolutely mind blowing.
What has ticked me off is the fact that because people have had to pay more for the cold snap and it affects them financially they are up in arms, shouting from the rooftops, switch off electricity ¡, blah blah blah yet when it comes to actually doing something to help reduce the effects of climate change, very few can be bothered to do it.
All we ask is that people turn off their lights at 20.30 (local time) on Saturday 27 March 2021 for one hour.
Here are some suggestions of activities!
1. Switch off your lights
This is the DNA of the Earth Hour movement and the easiest way to
participate this Earth Hour. Simply switch off all non-essential lights
for an hour!
2. Dinner-in-the-dark
Get some candles ready and whip up healthy and delicious meals that
will make your taste buds tingle! Don't know where to start? Check out
our list of 50 foods for a healthier planet and a healthier you!
Up for a challenge? Try a zero-waste cookout or put on a blindfold and try and guess what's been cooked up!
3. Have a night of board games or book readings in candle-light
Note: Our Earth Hour team will not be held responsible for any friendships ruined by a game of Monopoly 😇
4. Themed movie night
Get the popcorn ready and enjoy your most treasured Disney movies or
take on those Harry Potter marathons that you've been always wanting to
do. You can even watch some spectacular Emmy Award-winning documentaries
like Our Planet
on Netflix to experience our natural world in all its glory
#ShamelessPlug 😎! No Netflix? No problem! You can even catch one bonus
episode for free here - Our Planet: Our Business.
Still can't get enough of nature documentaries? The Environmental Film Festival is showing a large selection of their filmsfor free on their website for a limited time!
5. Make an impact in only 60 seconds - sign our Voice for the Planet petition
Only have a minute? Add your Voice
to call on world leaders to take urgent action to protect and restore
nature! Our Voice for the Planet petition will be presented at major
global conferences later in the year.
6. Camp in your backyard or living room
If you love the adventure of camping outdoors, we challenge you to
turn your back garden or living room into your very own camping space!
Don’t have an actual tent? Why not make one with bedsheets, pillows, and
other household items!
7. Create your own mini-golf course using household objects
A little friendly competition can’t hurt - up the stakes by making the loser do the washing up or any household chore 😅!
8. Challenge your artistic side with a candle-lit paint night
Feeling funky? You can also try using glow-in-the dark neon paint!
https://www.earthhour.org
The blog song for today is" I was born on a wandering star" by Lee Marvin
After a visit to our local beach La Vall in which we had a very lovely walk, a little bit windy but still very calm, collecting a bit of drift wood and generally looking out for our lovely friend Mr Plastic, we came away with a carrier bag full of enemy no 1.
We were only there for about an hour and this is what we collected:
As you can see there was a nice little assortment of goodies in the bag, I was very surprised to come across plastic straws, but I shouldn´t have been because the awful things get everywhere.
There was also what appeared to be parts of a motorbike or scooter, there was a nice little green light cover and various black plastic pieces too!
The haul mainly composed of plastic bottle tops, the actual bottle was nowhere to be seen, which makes me wonder where the tops came from!
What we did notice was the very small pieces of hard plastic, hidden in the sand, it had obviously been hammered by the sea, but it is quite alarming to see how much of it there was. I have no idea how these small pieces can be removed from the sand before being swept back out to sea.
Information I found on the National Geographic Website is very interesting, here is some of it!
In the last decade, beach cleanups have grown into a global phenomenon,
with volunteers gathering at regular intervals for the enormous task
of cleaning up plastic rubbish. Now, new research on a remote Australian
island chain suggests that beach cleanups can inadvertently mask the
full scale of plastic pollution, much of which lies below the sand’s
surface.
The look at isolated islands also provides a disturbing glimpse of
what beaches in populated places might look like if they were never
cleaned up and plastic simply accumulated year upon year, breaking down
ultimately into smaller and smaller pieces: microplastics.
The Ocean Conservancy
began conducting beach cleanups on a single Texas beach in 1986. It now
directs such operations in more than 100 countries that over the
decades have collected some 300 million pounds of rubbish.
Whose rubbish?
More than 80 percent of the 8 million tons
of plastic trash that end up in the world’s oceans every year
originates on land. But remote, uninhabited or sparsely populated
islands offer scientists a unique window into the consequences of global
waste and its movement around the world because little or none of it is
generated locally.
The Cocos (Keeling) Island group, an isolated chain of 27 small
atolls in the Indian Ocean 1,300 miles northwest of Australia, is home
to fewer than 600 people. Almost everyone lives on the two largest
islands. Essentially all of the trash that ends up on Cocos beaches is
carried by ocean currents and washes ashore.
The islands are advertised
as “Australia’s last unspoilt paradise.” Levers and her team arrived in
2017 to take samples of beach trash from 25 beaches on seven islands.
They collected wood, glass, metal and plastic from the surface areas of
beaches and the overgrown areas directly behind beaches where waste that
washes ashore also accumulates. They also collected microparticles
buried about four inches below the surface. Ninety-five percent of the
materials were plastics.
Based on the sampling, Lavers estimated that the string of islands
contained 414 million pieces of debris, weighing 238 tons.
Microparticles buried in the sand comprised 93 percent of the estimated
count.
“What you can see on the surface is the absolute tip of the iceberg,” Lavers says. “What is actually there is completely hidden from view.”
Among the larger items, 25 percent included straws, plastic bags,
toothbrushes, and shoes. Only 2 percent of the beach trash was fishing
gear, evidence that most of the fishing around the islands is
small-scale and not industrial, Lavers says.
Microplastic’s effects
The finding that the majority of the Cocos beach plastics are
microplastics embedded in sand is a logical outcome, given how plastics
break down into smaller and smaller pieces as they are exposed to
sunlight and wave action, said Kara Lavender Law, a research oceanographer at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts,
“I’m glad people are doing this kind of field work to look in more
detail about the kind of debris, including the sizes found on beaches
and how,” she says. “We don’t know the full extent of contamination of
beaches.”
Nearly a decade ago, scientists in Hawaii found that microplastics
embedded in beach sand made it easier for water to flow through the
sediment, which in turn affected how fast sand dries out. As
microplastics accumulated, they acted as an insulator, preventing heat
from reaching deeper layers of beach, affecting the temperature of sand.
That in turn had affected the sex of turtle hatchlings, which is determined by the temperature of eggs during incubation.
“Colder nest temperatures mean longer incubation times and can shift
the sex ratio of turtles, with more males being born,” says Steven Colbert, a marine scientist at the University of Hawaii, one of the authors of the 2011 study.
Lavers says the Cocos research—along with her 2017 study of plastic trash on isolated Henderson Island
in the South Pacific’s Pitcairn Islands, where she found the world’s
highest density of plastic pollution—provide a new platform to move this
kind of beach research forward.
“This is the million-dollar question: What does plastic do to the
functionality of beach sediment? You can’t keep adding to the beach and
not have it change,” she says. “At some point, it will change the
temperature of the beach, the chemistry of the beach, how the beach
absorbs or evaporates water. All of these things will be altered and all
of the animals that live on the beach will be affected.”
Lavers, the last scientist to visit Henderson, plans a 16-day return
trip to the uninhabited island to collect data on temperature, humidity,
and water content. She leaves June 1.
George Leonard,
the Ocean Conservancy’s chief scientist, said he is dubious of the idea
that California beaches might look similar to the Cocos beaches if
California beach cleanups stopped.
“You can’t make that
leap,” he says. “Habitats are different. The oceanography is different.
But the fact that plastic goes to places untouched by humans and leaves
such a ghastly footprint of our plastics obsession is pretty terrifying.
It’s a call for a global effort
The National Geographic
Society and Sky Ocean Ventures have launched the Ocean Plastic
Innovation Challenge, which asks problem solvers around the globe to
develop novel solutions to tackle the world’s plastic waste crisis.
National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at
natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.
Has a way been found to safely remove the microplastics from the ocean? Read below!
A teen from Ireland may have found the solution to rid world's oceans from the microplastics that are near impossible to remove.
Fionn
Ferreira, 18, designed a new method for the extraction of
microplastics, or particles of plastic less than 5 millimeters in
diameter, as part of the Google Science Fair, an online competition open to students between the ages of 13 and 18.
The
procedure, inspired by an article written by physicist Arden Warner,
involves using non-toxic iron oxide to clean up oil spills, according to
Ferreira's project study. When he tested the method on water containing
a known concentration of microplastics, the plastic particles migrated
into the oil phase, and the fluid was able to be removed using strong
magnets, he wrote in his project synopsis.
He first produced
microplastics to remove from the water and then extracted them using his
method. Ten of the most common microplastics were used for the
experiment.
Ferreira
concluded that his extraction method would remove 85% to 92% of
microplastics in samples. The next step would be to scale the project up
to an industrial level, he said.
"From this I can conclude that
using magnetite with a minimum of oil forms a viable method for the
extraction of microplastics," he wrote.
Ferreira was inspired to launch the project after growing up near the
shore in West Cork, Ireland, where he became "increasingly aware of plastic pollution of the oceans," he said.
"I
was alarmed to find out how many microplastics enter our [wastewater]
system and consequently the oceans," he wrote. "This inspired me to try
and find out a way to try and remove microplastics from water before
they even reached the sea."
Because he lives in such a remote area, he had to build his own
equipment and lab to conduct tests and experiments, he said. On his website, Ferreria describes himself as not only a scientist but a musician, gardener, educator, entrepreneur and innovator.
I think that is really great! But just because we have potentially found a way to remove the microplastics it doesn´t change the fact that we should be using less plastic.
