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Posts Tagged ‘water’
Ocean Pollution: All You Ought To Know
Recently, we saw the Plastiki – a sailboat produced out of 12,500 plastic bottles – complete its 15,000 km journey from San Francisco to Sydney. The publicity surrounding this event has been applied to highlight the perils facing the oceans and certainly a single of them is plastic material waste.
A massive mess inside the oceans
According on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), more than 13,000 pieces of plastic material litter the surface of every square kilometre of ocean.
We all live in a world that is covered mostly by water. That is why it it is incredibly essential to preserve our water resources. The ocean for example, is really a valuable source of energy, foods and mineral resources. The quantity of waste materials introduced towards the ocean yearly from factories, energy plants and shipping industries is tremendous. Several of these goods are discovered to be carcinogenic.
Charles Moore, the scientist credited for discovering the Pacific Garbage Patch said earlier this year: “Humanity’s plastic material footprint is almost certainly more hazardous than its carbon footprint.”
This signifies that it’ll accelerate the plankton growth, resulting in increased consumption of dissolved oxygen. Most wastes have to have oxygen to decay. If much oxygen is utilised up within the process, marine existence will also be in danger. Last issue faced will be the accumulation of toxic chemicals and minerals. This may consist of DDT, aldrin and dieldrin in standard water bodies.
We’ve heard with the Pacific Garbage Patch, now scientists are warning that a floating mass of scattered refuse extends through thousands of square miles in the remote Atlantic.
There are other examples of standard water pollution. This can cause a coating to build up on the gill filaments of fish and ultimately bringing about suffocation. Industrial and chemical wastes emptied into our rivers and streams such as cyanides, acids, alkalies, oils, and pesticides, may well have an effect on not only the inhabitants with the body of h2o but also the ocean into which the drinking water flows.
Turtles are especially vulnerable as they can not distinguish in between jellyfish (their staple feed) and plastic.
Plastic air pollution is also a hazard to individual safety. Waste can clog up waterways and this can have catastrophic consequences.
An costly mess
Plastic waste is expensive. Plastic merchandise might be cheap to create – just pennies for a typical shopping bag – but their cleanup (not to mention their effects on individual and environmental health) can cost a lot more.
They are petroleum goods produced from a non-renewable supply and dependency on oil is continued with plastic use.
If you were entertained by this essayyou would also be inspired by finding out about Air Pollution Articles and also Causes Of Water Pollution.
No Green Without Blue
Whole house rain water system
It should be clear to all of us that water is the single most important “element” for life. When scientists look for signs of life out in the greater universe, they first look for signs of liquid water. And here at home on Earth we know all life needs this fluid of life to exist. Yet when we think of the bright green future, rarely is water put out front. We talk of Solar, wind, algae based bio fuels etc. But not about our diminishing supply of fresh, clean water. It seems that the only people who pay attention to this are in areas where it is already a scarce commodity, such as the Dessert Southwest and the Australia outback.
Here I live in a part of the world known for our over-abundance of fresh water. We have the mighty Columbia River, plentiful rainfall and immense aquifers. But even in this land of abundant water, we are already seeing our resource start to be used beyond the capacity of nature to refill. Many of the local municipalities are spending MILLIONS of taxpayer dollars to increase storage and supply, as growth here has far outpaced the infrastructure.
It hit home recently. We are in need of replacing our gutters. This winter they have been damaged by ice, branches, etc, to the point they no longer work properly. And, properly working gutters are not a nicety, they are necessary. So, I starting doing the math to calculate how much water hits our metal roof in a year, and then travels through our gutters, and is “disposed” of. And then starting looking at our water bills to determine how much water we use in the summer for the yard… We get 20,000+ gallons of fresh rainwater on our roof every year. In the summer we will use 17,000 gallons for our yard…
That water comes from our community well, which is treated with fluoride, chlorine etc. So why am I using this water, that is treated to make it “safe” to drink, to water plants, who then spend energy to get rid of the chemicals we treat the water with? Why am I using it to flush my toilets? The plants would prefer rain water, and the toilets could care less.
The inevitable outcome of this type of thinking is to start capturing and storing the rainwater. Use that water on the garden, toilets etc. In the overall scheme of things, it is a small additional price when adding or replacing gutters to include a cistern. We’d love to capture and store the full 20,000 gallons, but are starting small. As part of our gutter system we are installing 2x 550 gallons tanks that will be used primarily on the garden. When we remodel the house (hopefully soon) we will adding several more tanks and install a Purple Water system (aka grey water, but using rainwater) for the bathrooms.
I promise to post pictures, and a detailed account of how the system goes together. Step one, the gutters will occur March 12th, weather permitting.