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| Link to Daily Telegraph |
"... For all its distractions and limitations, the message at the heart of this book is truly worthwhile. In southern Hawaii he finds 'the dirtiest beach in the world'. It is chilling to learn that sieving seawater at the centre of the North Pacific Gyre (a gyre being the confluence of wind, tide and currents that rotate at the centre of the world’s oceans, gathering detritus) produces a higher dry weight of plastic than of plankton.
The best part of this journey is its beginning, when Hohn goes to Alaska, a place we imagine teeming with grizzly bears, wild salmon, great mountains and miles and miles of wilderness. At the uninhabited Gore Point, Hohn joins the genuinely quixotic Chris Pallister and his motley crew as they retrieve and place plastic debris into thousands upon thousands of 'super sacks' that can be airlifted back to a municipal landfill.
The facts about our despoliation of the world need no embellishment. There is good science here, obscured only by Hohn’s ambition to seem literary, but he conjures a truly terrifying vision of how much new plastic tat will be born, as China’s consumerist growth outstrips even that of America."
where I live in brent the street drains have become unofficial dustbins and ashtrays.
ReplyDeleteyes believe it or not people just dump all kinds of things into the drains.
or the things are dropped onto the pavements and somehow end up in the drains...and along with huge amounts of dust, eventually the drains are no longer fit for purpose.
I am telling the truth...last friday morning for example I spoke to two men who work as drain cleaners and I decided to stop and tell them that I had seen drains that were literally clogged up with dust and cigarette butts etc and they explained to me how the drain cleaning process works.
and basically they were saying that because the council has cut the street cleaning budget there are less drain cleaning vans to take out and also that when you consider how many drains there are in brent they say it is impossible to clean them all.
shocking isn't it? doesn't inspire confidence either.
so once again the local authorities slash the street cleaning budget and as a consequence drains and pavements and green areas are left undone and yet amazingly brent has been chosen to represent the upcoming london olympics?
I'm confused because If I had any say in the decision making brent would not have been chosen.
let it get its act togther first.
I doubt that will ever happen.
anyway sadly it does not surprise me that even the sea hass have been used as a dustbin by people.
it is a sign of the times...