Styrofoam sucks...
I've just returned from a foray on the beach cleaning up styrofoam pieces of all kinds — from cups, packing materials, insulation, whatever. And judging from just the little bit that has washed up on the small strip of sand in front of my family's beach house, there must be a hell of a lot of the stuff in the world's oceans.
'Smatter of fact, cleaning up the lightweight litter irritated me so much that I went right to my computer to see if the URL styrofoamsucks.com were available for purchase. But alas! It was taken.
By whom? I wondered. A militant group of environmentalists perhaps? Some liberated chemistry sudents maybe? I even imagined a group of little old ladies who were tired of going to their local coffee house and receiving styrofoam cups instead of porcelain mugs.
As it turns out, none of the above. For clicking on styrofoamsucks.com sends the visitor to this webpage owned by none other than Dow Chemical Company, the trademark holder of Styrofoam the product.
I will admit as a matter of practicality (as well as not to get sued) that styrofoam does provide many benefits to human civilization. But like so many of the products we have created to render humans a "better" lifestyle, it has its downside as well. Below are a few websites that detail how styrofoam impacts our environment in ways that we'd rather it not:
'Smatter of fact, cleaning up the lightweight litter irritated me so much that I went right to my computer to see if the URL styrofoamsucks.com were available for purchase. But alas! It was taken.
By whom? I wondered. A militant group of environmentalists perhaps? Some liberated chemistry sudents maybe? I even imagined a group of little old ladies who were tired of going to their local coffee house and receiving styrofoam cups instead of porcelain mugs.
As it turns out, none of the above. For clicking on styrofoamsucks.com sends the visitor to this webpage owned by none other than Dow Chemical Company, the trademark holder of Styrofoam the product.
I will admit as a matter of practicality (as well as not to get sued) that styrofoam does provide many benefits to human civilization. But like so many of the products we have created to render humans a "better" lifestyle, it has its downside as well. Below are a few websites that detail how styrofoam impacts our environment in ways that we'd rather it not:
- Polystyrene Foam Report
- How is styrofoam bad for the environment?
- 10 million tons of trash floating in the Pacific — Money quote: "The simple fact is that when you drop a Styrofoam cup onto the street, you're causing more damage than you would by dropping a stick of dynamite into the ocean." — Captain Paul Watson, www.seashepherd.org
- Reduce Ocean Pollution from Environment California — Money quote: "Plastic like Styrofoam doesn't biodegrade, it just gets broken into smaller pieces. Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and marine debris expert in Seattle, says one pound of plastic turns into 100,000 small pieces of plastic if left in the ocean."
- Ocean Pollution - Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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