skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Friday, March 29, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Expert: A Sea of Plastic Destroying Oceans

play audio
Play

Monday, November 14, 2011   

HARTFORD, Conn. - We live in a sea of plastic these days: plastic bags from the grocery store, water bottles, and packaging and junk of all kinds. There's a real sea of plastic, too: five huge, Texas-sized garbage patches of discarded plastic in the world's oceans.

Captain Charles Moore is credited with discovering one of the massive areas of floating waste. He says the majority of the trash originates as plastic bags and wrappings and, while they can't pinpoint exactly where most of it is coming from, it is an enormous problem.

"It's got to the point where this global throw-away lifestyle has had an effect on the world ocean, and it's turned it into what I call a plastic soup. "

Not only is the plastic mess that takes up an estimated 40 percent of the world's oceans unsightly, but Moore says sea creatures are eating the shards of plastic, and in turn, humans are eating those fish.

Moore says the garbage patches are located in the North and South Atlantic, North and South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, and there's lots of garbage floating in areas in between.

He says there's not much that can be done about what's already there.

"You're not going to be able to economically retrieve the stuff out of the ocean. In general, our trash needs to be kept on land. We're not going to get it out of the ocean."

Moore says the one thing everybody can do is at least take a single first step.

"Bring your own cup to the coffee bar, bring your own bag to the store. Do as much as you can to create the awareness amongst those people you deal with that there's a problem here."

Captain Moore created the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1994 and is on a tour promoting his just-published book about his discovery of the "plastic ocean" and how it has led him to go from environmentalist to activist.




get more stories like this via email

more stories
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the popular abortion pill Mifepristone and will weigh in on whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was correct in how it can be dosed and prescribed. (Ascannio/Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Missouri residents are worried about future access to birth control. The latest survey from The Right Time, an initiative based in Missouri…


Social Issues

play sound

Wisconsin children from low-income families are now on track to get nutritious foods over the summer. Federal officials have approved the Badger …

Social Issues

play sound

Almost 2,900 people are unsheltered on any given night in the Beehive State. Gov. Spencer Cox is celebrating signing nine bills he says are geared …


The U.S. teaching workforce remains primarily white while the percentage of Black teachers has declined. However, the percentage of Asian and Latinx teachers is rising.(WavebreakMediaMicro/Adobestock)

Social Issues

play sound

Education advocates are calling on lawmakers to increase funding for programs to combat the teacher shortage. Around 37% of schools nationwide …

Environment

play sound

New York's Legislature is considering a bill to get clean-energy projects connected to the grid faster. It's called the RAPID Act, for "Renewable …

Social Issues

play sound

Earlier this month, a new Arizona Public Service rate hike went into effect and one senior advocacy group said those on a fixed income may struggle …

Social Issues

play sound

Michigan recently implemented a significant juvenile justice reform package following recommendations from a task force made up of prosecutors…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021