Response to "The Story of Electronics" Video by Annie Leonard

In this video, Anne Leonard talks about how electronics are "designed for the dumps", as in-made in a way so it could be broken easily in order to drive you to buy a new one, therefore allowing companies to make more money. It is impossible to get a broken device fixed. This has happened to me so many times. I walked into the store hoping to get my phone fixed and I leave the store with a new phone I paid $200 for. They put the price high in order to convince you to buy a new item for a few dollars less, making you think that you're saving money.  These devices contain toxic materials such as mercury and flame retardants. These chemicals not only cause harm to our environment, but also to our bodies. "Workers making computer chips had 40% more miscarriages, together with having blood, brain, and/or kidney cancer" (Leonard). In order to get rid of this issue, we need to buy less, have regulations on companies and small businesses, and become educated on what we could do in order for these useless electronic products to be properly recycled. Workers who often work with these materials are from developmental countries that have no access to protective gears that can stop the intake of high chemical exposures. We need to go to its source. In order to make less trash, we need to use less trash. In my opinion, we should make companies get rid of warranty policies, and actually buy back broken products, and use its parts to create a new product. They can even consider to fix a customer's device instead of indirectly convincing them to purchase a new and improved one. We can even set regulations on the amount of trash each companies or small businesses throw away, and force violation fees to those who choose to not follow these regulations. We could even force electronic companies to make their products safer and long lasting. If manufacturers decide to take responsibility for the recycling of their own products, the problem will decrease incredibly. We need to sacrifice in order to save the planet we live on. 

Garbology Chapter 7

In Chapter 7 of Garbology, Edward Humes talked about how he believes that the reason why we have so much trash is because people are not educated about where all the trash leads too. What Humes specifies is that people carelessly dispose their trash and do not even wonder where all their junk goes, not even the people working in waste companies. The Waste Management Inc was the first "trash trackers". They had actually followed where their trash leads too by placing tracking devices on certain trash in order to count how far trash actually goes. They had selected one hundred homes and listed certain items to test: paper, cardboard, organics, leather, rubber, plastic, glass,metal, and e-waste. Someone had seen their old sneakers 337 miles away from where she was. A plastic traffic cone made it 6.6 miles away from where it originally was. From all the waste we create, e-waste by far has the worst consequences. Humes specifies that it raises serious questions about how much effort we actually put in order to prevent this. "Recycling in particular has long served as a balm and a penance- a way of making it okay to waste.."(Humes 154). We are always told to recycle or donate broken cell phones or computers but do not actually know where it goes. I myself have donated broken cell phones in order to feel better about "saving the environment", but now I am curious as to where it exactly goes. Are we recycling as much as EPA says we are? I wonder where all my trash is going.

Garbology Chapter 6

         Chapter 6 was by far one of the most interesting chapters of Garbology. It talked about how plastic was created, its unplanned influences, and how it is found everywhere. It begins by talking about Miriam Goldstein and her discoveries of nurdles. Nurdles are small grains of broken down plastic that is washed up on the shores of our beaches. Although they are found at almost every beach, people miss it almost always. It is easily taken for sea shells. Miriam Goldstein has been on extended sea voyages four times in less than two years trying to gather data. When she had gotten reports of the Pacific Garbage Patch, she had expected to see visible trash but she had found nothing. What they found instead were high concentrations of small plastic. What people do not understand is the impact that plastic is making. Half the oxygen we breathe in, come from plankton that live on the surface of the ocean. We depend on them. Plastic asks as a magnet or a sponge that attracts toxic chemicals. As these plankton eat the toxins, they bring toxins in the food chain, which is not only bad for the marine fish, but also to the humans that eat those fish. About 7 million tons of trash ends up in the ocean, with plastic being 80 percent. Plastic had started with an American chemist named Leo Baekland. Plastic first started off with radios, telephones, and retro items and soon ended up everywhere. It was this flexible, interesting new product that interested everyone.
       I feel like we have become so dependent on plastic because of the fact of how quick and convenient it makes everything. Instead of washing so many dishes for example, people use plastic cups, plates, and utencils. All that plastic is disposed and washed up into the ocean. Plastic feels light and harmless, but in reality it affects our environment tremendously. After I had finished reading this chapter, I looked around my room and realized how much plastic there is. I am just one person in one house and I accumulate this much plastic. It's pretty disappointing.

Garbology Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Garbology mainly addressed about a sixty year old woman named Mary Crowley and her experiences throughout Project Kaisei. During her time at sea, she had seen our trash floating in the ocean, from floating detergent bottles to lawn chairs to cracked pieces of plastic. What grabbed my attention was when Crowley mentioned that it wasn't what she saw that terrified her, it was what she couldn't see. She talked about how she couldn't see anything from the surface but when she got samples of the sea water, she found tiny pieces of plastic, "trash confetti" that is too small to be pointed out by the naked eye. She refers to the ocean as plastic chowder. The chapter referenced different scientists that had worked with Crowley through her discoveries and examined the intestines of fish that lived around the areas that had the most pollution. Researches found more than 9 percent of the fish had plastic in their digestive tracts. A two year old whale, located in the San Francisco Bay Area contained 450 pounds of debris in its digestive tracts and later died from starvation. We are causing deaths in order to live comfortably. Bar soap alone, Humes explains, contains tiny grains of plastic. Each time we take a shower with our favorite scented shampoo, we are draining down grains of plastic that eventually land inside a baby whales intestines. All our illegal dumping add up. An engineer named Norton Smith, worked with Crowley in inventing The Beach. This device was used to collect plastic from the sea by being careful not to suck in marine life with it. After multiple tests, the device was successful. I truly agreed with Crowley's point of how building such a time consuming and expensive device is pointless, when what we should really do is have a "worldwide reduction in disposable plastic garbage, and an end to the constant flow of plastic that goes missing every year, and ends up as marine chowder"(Humes 123). Although The Beach was successful, we didn't have a need for that. What we need is to correct our mistakes in order to not make it worse. We need to use less plastic in our products and try to find another source. If manufacturers internationally decide to make their products safer, we could put an end to this unintended plastic chowder.

Response to the " 19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World's Oceans" Article

          The article "19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World's Oceans" by Timon Singh talked about a 19 year old named Boyan Slate that created a device called the Ocean Cleanup Array. This device is made up of floating tunnels that force plastic into its direction. It filters and stores things that could be recycled, and separates trash from marine animals that get sucked into the machine. The cleanup process was estimated to be about five years. I think that this was the revolutionary discovery the world was waiting for. More people should be aware of this device, for it could create an end to this plastic epidemic tremendously. I cannot believe a nineteen year old student constructed such a device that could change the world. What I really liked most about this project is the fact that it is designed in such a way that the workers have the ability to keep track of what the ocean cleanup array collects. It collects and also stores products that could possibly be recycled. One device could clean up more than 7 million plastic particles. The world was waiting for Boyan Slate.

Response to the "Scripps Study Shows Plastic in Pacific Patch Has Increased 100-Fold" Article

This article talks about how plastic in the Great Pacific increased 100 times from the estimations they had concluded forty years ago. Researchers had found insects that had laid eggs in these pieces of small plastic. It is really sad because we are harming not only harming our environment, but also the habitats that animals depend on. The shores that animals use to lay their fertilized eggs on are filled with tiny particles of plastic that marine animals confuse for their eggs. This article explains how people assume that the plastics that are found in oceans are just plastic bottles and other sorts of trash but rather, it consists more of tiny particles of plastic broken down to sizes that are impossible to be seen by the naked eye. It is disappointing to hear that the Pacific Ocean, the closest ocean to the U.S. has an increase of the amount of plastic it consumes. Our trash crisis is worse than I thought.

Response to the "Even If We Stopped Polluting Today, Ocean Garbage Patches Would Linger For Hundreds Of Years" Article

          I just finished reading the article "Even If We Stopped Polluting Today, Ocean Garbage Patches Would Linger For Hundreds Of Years" by Beth Buczynki and was absolutely amazed by what I came across. The article talks about the cycle of plastic and how it ends up in the ocean. An attached video in the article explained how researchers tossed surface drifter boards into the ocean. The boards were specially designed to act like plastics. This allowed them to estimate the amount of time plastic remains in the ocean and demonstrated the way they move around and travel all around the world.

  I was truly amazed to hear the cycle of plastic and the way they land in the oceans, how the sun breaks its particles down over time, and how plankton and birds eat this plastic that may even contain toxins. As they eat the toxins, they add toxins into the food chain. It was discussed that getting the plastics out of the ocean is impossible because of how small and diverse it could be. In order to get rid of this issue, we need to go to its source. Companies that manufacture plastics internationally should make them in a way that it could break down and disintegrate over time, so that even if they do end up in our oceans, they won't cause problems like they do today.
          There is more plastic in the ocean than marine life. This is impossible to comprehend. After reading this, I am not sure if the fish I purchase is fish or fresh plastic from our oceans. What interested my attention the most was how our ocean water circulates through eddies, sending our pollution to other countries and vice versa. I feel that people are just waiting for the last minute to actually do something about our world's trash crisis. In order to not forever live in a world of rubbish, we must contribute from all around in order to decrease the use of plastic and littering to not only our oceans, but also to the rest of our environment. As I get deeper into this issue, I get more concerned and terrified. It is crazy how much trash we accumulate, yet we have no idea what we are leading our world into.