Not In My Backyard

Have you ever heard of the Cuyahoga River? As recently as 40 years ago, it was not unheard of to see it on fire. The depth of pollution on the surface of the water was often several inches thick. You can read more about that here. Since then, the EPA has worked to clean up disasters such as that one, from mines to chemical dumps to DoD sites, but in recent years, the EPA has suffered from funding cuts (thank Bush for that one), and it struggles to fight major polluters. That problem can only get worse as more executives from those corporations find their way into the government. This is not the point I am trying to make today.
I read an article about the EPA which was written on Earth Day (I was attempting a digital detox last week) which stated that today's problems are invisible (greenhouse gases etc) becuase the EPA has cleaned up the visible pollution. While the burning rivers and toxic sludge of the 70's have been dealt with, pollution has not gone away. Ask the people of Libby, Picher or Anniston.
Earlier this year, news broke of a new floating garbage patch - this time in the Atlantic Ocean. Read the National Geographic article here. There are between 500,000 and 1,900,000 pieces of plastic trash in each square mile of the garbage patch. Can you imagine what we've done? You don't have to. This BBC video shows the scale of the problem on a Hawaiian beach. A new harvest of plastic debris washes up each day. Not only that, but the beach itself is becoming plastic!
I'm not sure what kind of a warning sign we need to see before we do something. If the average suburb looked like that beach, would we change the way we live? Should we use disposable products at all?

The Blue Closet

  Our seas and oceans have been popular dumping grounds for many decades. People have dumped all manner of waste: raw sewage, household trash, medical waste, explosives, chemicals (including chemical weapons such as nerve agents) and varying levels of radioactive materials.
Household trash, and in particular plastic, is one of the more visible and widespread pollutants of the "blue closet".
  It is becoming apparent that efforts to reduce the scale of the problem have failed, and it continues to get worse. For example, "20,000 tons of waste finds its way into the North Sea alone, primarily from ships and the fishing industry". Of course, the problem is a global one, and I'm sure we've all heard about the giant floating garbage patches in our oceans. On average, there are "18,000 visible bits of plastic floating on every square kilometer of sea", according to one study. Like our disappearing icebergs, there is more below the surface. In fact, "up to 67 percent of the trash sinks to the sea floor".
  The volume of plastics and their ingestion by wildlife is not the only problem facing us. The plastics attract some of the many chemical pollutants in the water, concentrating them to levels up to "a million times higher than normal".
  As those toxins enter the food chain, the concentrations only increase in the creatures at the top. That would be you.

You can read the full article here or just view the accompanying photos here.
You can find shirts on this issue here and here.