Amount of Plastic Recycled = Diddly.Squat

Where “diddly.squat < 5 percent”.

I have just watched a few TED presentations, as I tend to do most weekends.

One of the ones I watched today was “Captain Charles Moore on the Seas of Plastic”.

Now I know I have posted on the massive rubbish tips of plastic in the oceans before, so I won’t go on and on about it again here (although I feel this issue does deserve the exposure). I will just put in a few bullet point comments about items covered by Captain Moore in his TED presentation and then provide you with the direct link to the presentation.

• “Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest”.
• The amount of plastic that is actually recycled is about equal to “diddly.squat”, pronounced as “diddly point squat”.
• Plastic that is recycled is recycled into more plastic stuff.
• In the USA alone 2 million (2,000,000) plastic beverage bottles are ‘used’ every 5 minutes.
• Hundred of thousands of Albatross chicks die each breeding session because their parents feed them plastic, thinking it is food (seeing it tossing about on the ocean surface like small fish).
• The problem can never be fixed: “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men will never gather up all the plastic and put the ocean back together again”.

Captain Moore’s presentation on TED is 7.5 minutes long.

It can be found here [Use Ctrl+Click to open this link in a new Tab].