BY FRANCES ROBLESMARCH 13, 2007 03:01 AM, UPDATED OCTOBER 02, 2008 06:12 PM Johan Luciano is 13 years old and got kicked out of school in the first grade, because nothing he learned ever stayed in his head. Environmental experts who know him say his developmental delay is the direct result of a battery recycling plant […]
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Month: September 2019
Gold mining leaves heart of Peruvian Amazon a wasteland
A decade of illegal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon has left thousands of acres of rainforest a wasteland. Unpermitted miners cleared vast sections of trees near Peru’s border with Brazil and infused the land with mercury, causing an environmental disaster. But some miners have fled after Peruvian troops moved in. Special correspondent Leo Schwartz […]
The rise of robots in waste management and recycling
The rise of robots will disrupt the waste management and recycling industry in unimaginable ways. Waste collection, recycling, sorting and treatment facilities as well as traditional sanitary landfill operations will be transformed. However, the risk for a jobless future in waste management and recycling is more than serious. Is there a way to utilise the […]
A Look at the Lives of People Separating Waste at One of Asia’s Biggest Garbage Dumps
Environmental Extremes Between battling authorities who have closed off access to their only source of livelihood, harassment by the local mafia and a drug problem, this is the harsh reality of being a ragpicker at India’s Deonar dump. By Shamani Joshi; photos by Arpita De18 September 2019, 4:20amShareTweet ALL PHOTOS BY ARPITA DE This article is part […]
When The Mermaids Cry – THE CONSENSUS
THE CONSENSUS Undeniably a culture of behavioural changes, now in its infancy, need to further blossom and be implemented/prompted at all levels: individual, associative, governmental, legislative, industrial, technological, educational, philosophical, national, and international. It simply starts with individual choices. That is the enormous task, yet the enormous power as well because it resides within each […]
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY – THE PATH TO SUCCESSFUL RESOLUTION
I: THE PATH TO SUCCESSFUL RESOLUTION This unprecedented plastic waste tide appears as vast as the ocean, as ungraspable as the unfathomable mass of microscopic plastic fragments present at sea, transported by winds and currents, yet, ultimately, the plastic tide can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral […]
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY – GYRES AND GARBAGE PATCHES
GYRES AND GARBAGE PATCHES The plastic litter defacing the beaches of the World, alarming in Hawaiian archipelagos for instance, led, only two decades ago, a couple of private and public teams of environmentalists and scientists to start conducting research regarding marine debris in the oceans. Between 1985 and 1988, an Alaska- based team of researchers […]
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY – FACTS ABOUT PLASTIC
FACTS ABOUT PLASTIC What Is Plastic? A simple definition could be: any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened, including many types of resins, resinoids, polymers, cellulose derivatives, casein materials, and proteins: used in place of other materials, as glass, wood, and metals, in […]
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY – MAGNITUDE SCOPE EXTENT
I: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDE: MAGNITUDE, SCOPE, EXTENT A full understanding of the magnitude and scope of this plastic pollution starts with clear definitions as to what and why it is happening. Thus, we will define the notions of marine debris, gyres, and oceanic garbage patches, or giant floating marine debris field, as first discovered […]
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDE – INTRODUCTION
By Claire Le Guern Last updated in March 2018. INTRODUCTION 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 pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling […]