Thursday 28 June 2007

READ IT AND WEEP!

I have lots of Google alerts that show up in my email box but nothing prepared me for this one.

On the 6th of April 2002 (21 days before my 16th birthday!) a young female minke whale washed up onto the beach at Normandy in France. The contents of her stomach were: 1x plastic/aluminium crisp packet, 2 English supermarket carrier bags, 7x various colour dustbin bags, 7x transparent plastic bags and 1x food packaging wrapper.

I hear you ask huh why would a minke whale eat plastic bags. No-one knows how long these plastic bags take to biodegrade as they have only really been in use for the last 3o years, but they already cover the earth - globally humans consume 1 million plastic bags PER MINUTE!!!!!!!! they photodegrade - they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits. SO back to the Minke - whales and other marine wildlife get confused and mistake the plastic bags for jellyfish. the whale or other animal/mammal then dies and decomposes around the plastic bag, the bag then floats of to catch it's next victim.

Now i hear you saying what can i do? You can do bits like buy a fabric bag for life at the supermarket - and reuse it.

How can this happen? I am just shocked.
How can we do the to the world that we live in and the creatures who live in it?

Make a Simple Tote Bag
PRESS ABOVE FOR PATTERN

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