Amazing Coral Reef Threatened By Plastic

‘Suedwestpresse’ now had an article in which people from different demographic groups from Stuttgart give tips on how to spend their involuntary Corona-vacation. Two girls from secondary school for example say they spend their free time by removing waste and dirt from their surroundings. One author suggests buying from the nearest stores only instead of ordering things from the Internet or even doing your shopping in another town. Not only is this local shopping more environmentally-friendly, not only do you support businesses that need it the most (local book stores, local dairies, local bakeries…), but you also limit the chance of importing the virus from other cities.

‘Tagesschau’ says that due to Corona the plastic-contamination of the sea has increased rapidly. Reason is that people buy wear masks and gloves and chemical substances to desinfect things – all of which contain plastic particles. These particles sooner or later end up in the sea. Some even go so far as to pour chemicals into the ground when they don’t need them anymore or dump gloves in the forest which only accelerates the process of sea pollution though.

According to the German TV-show ‘Simplicissimus’ – the episode was called ‘Wie Coca-Cola die Meere vergiftet’ (How Coca Cola Poisons the Sea) – there now are updated statistics provided by the organization ‘Break-Free-From-Plastic’. These say that the companies Coca Cola, Pepsi Co, Nestle, Danone, Unilever, Mars Incorporated and McDonalds are among the companies that produce the biggest amount of plastic waste worldwide.

The German documentary series ‘Mehr wissen – besser leben’ (Knowing More – Living Better) now had an episode about plastic and its recycling. They say that while most people think of bamboo coffee cups as something environmentally-friendly these cups are actually not entirely made of bamboo. They also contain plastic and thus can’t be recycled.
Another thing this episode told us is that we should avoid black plastic things – black shampoo-bottles, black bags etc. The reason is that the sorting machine on the landfill site does not recognize black things and thus won’t sort black plastic bottles or bags out.

The German newspaper ‘Suedwestpresse’ now published this great article about a Buddhist monastery in Thailand where the monks collect plastic trash to use the synthetic substance for the robes of their monks.