Plastic is a Cunt.

I fucking hate plastic and the fact that it is everywhere
and entirely unavoidable makes me hate it even more,
theres no fucking end to it.Not only that but experts
believe most of the shit we're producing now will still
be with us in a thousand years ( I don't know how they
know this but I do know that an old dump in Bray,Co.
Wicklow,closed this 30 years was recently pictured in
the New York Times *,collapsing into the sea with all the
plastic in the same condition as when it was buried).

When Ireland introduced a tax on plastic bags to reduce
the use of plastic,it had the opposite effect as you'd be
hard pressed now to buy anything that is not
smothered in plastic of a far greater density.The only
winners because of this tax are the Supermarket chains
who save millions of Euro by not having to buy and give
free carrier-bags because most of their customers now
bring their own bags.Fair enough,you don't see as many
plastic bags stuck in trees and ditches but now we are
producing mountains of poly-styrene trays and plastic
trays,boxes and punnets.

I don't know how people managed years ago when their
meat or fish was wrapped in a geeful of brown paper and
greaseproof,if at all.Nowadays your meat,fish and chicken
is pumped so full of water,salt and other shit that they
wouldn't stay in a brown bag pissin' time and end up on
the floor before you left the counter.This process is known
as Value Added,and value added is what it is,only not for
the consumer but for the retailer who can gain up to 30%
on the original weight.Also value is the increasingly popular
use of vacuum-packing,which increases the shelf life of
fresh products by at least five days but is wrapped in
plastic far more dense than normal plastic.

The worlds annual consumption of plastic has increased
from 5 million tonnes in the 50s to over 100 million
tonnes today with the U.K. alone producing 3 million
tonnes of waste every year of which,up to 2003 only
17.9% was recycled.This leaves a fair bit for land-fills
and incineration,and litter.56% of all litter found on
beaches is plastic,how was your fish supper last night ?

What about wildlife ?,I don't hear you ask,most sea-
birds in the world are filled with plastic.Heres someone
who,unlike me,does know what hes talking about.
“It’s a disgrace for humankind that we have so much unnecessary rubbish,” says Dr Jan van Franeker, a Dutch marine biologist. “We should respect other forms of life on this planet, not offload our problems onto them.”
Franeker is a world expert on plastic waste at sea who has been leading a “Save the North Sea” research project funded by European governments for the past two years. Last week, at the Alterra laboratory on the Dutch island of Texel, he revealed his results exclusively to the Sunday Herald.
The scale and extent of the plastic pollution he has uncovered is staggering. Nineteen out of every 20 dead fulmars analysed by his team from around the North Sea had plastic in them. Each bird had swallowed an average of 44 pieces, weighing a total of 0.33 grams. One fulmar found in Belgium had ingested 1603 pieces, while another from Denmark had 20.6 grams of plastic in its stomach – equivalent to two kilograms in a human-sized stomach.
Franeker’s team collected 560 dead fulmars from the shores of eight countries around the North Sea between 2002 and 2004, plus 38 from the Faroes for comparison. Fulmars are members of the petrel family of seabirds and are common throughout the North Sea.
They feed at sea, eating fish, squid, plankton and carrion from near the surface. But at the same time they seem to ingest any waste, like plastic, which is floating around, causing them to be dubbed “flying dustbins”.
But Franeker stressed that it is not just boats that are to blame. Some of the waste is dumped into rivers and washed out to sea, and some, like plastic bags and balloons, is blown off the land.
“That 95% of fulmars in the North Sea area have plastic in their stomachs is shocking enough, but when you think that this is just an indicator species, which feeds solely at sea, and scale the problem up you start to realise how many, and to what extent, other marine mammals and birds are affected.
“More needs to be done to tackle marine litter sources round the coast of Scotland – and we can only urge people to have some pride, and think before leaving litter at the beach, throwing unwanted items overboard or discharging waste illegally.”
Franeker also found evidence that North Sea fulmars are feeding plastic waste to their chicks in regurgitated food. After breeding, adult birds recorded lower levels of plastic in their stomach than chicks.
In another study in the Antarctic, he found plastic fragments in the stomachs of eight out of every 10 chicks born to small seabirds called Wilson’s storm petrels. An analysis of Laysan albatross chicks that had died in their nests in Hawaii uncovered a wide range of ingested plastic debris, including a cigarette lighter, a toothbrush, a tampon applicator, a toy robot, a golf ball, and lids from a car battery and shampoo bottle.

Now you'll believe me ,plastic is a cunt,but you knew that already.


*I tried for hours to up/download the picture,but you can see it at
http://www.earthopenetwork.net/ Ireland's _ Garbage_ Secrets _Come_ Glaringly _to _Light.htm