05 October 2018

Plastic in the environment - updated

Source.

In response to an anonymous comment ("ahhh....photoshop") this morning, I searched for and found a video of an equivalent turtle (p.s. Amy, you are hereby warned...) :


In 2009 I posted an item at Neatorama entitled "Death by Plastic" with photos of albatross and seabird carcasses engorged with plastic; among the 30+ comments were several claiming that the stories were fake and the images contrived.  I don't know whether there are some people who actually don't believe these things happen, or whether they just get personal satisfaction out of making troll comments.

That same year I also posted this indescribably horrifying video of plastic heading out to sea from a Romanian river.  I'll keep posting these items, because what humans are doing to our oceans is nothing short of criminal.

Reposted from 2011 to add this report that Carlsberg is now gluing beer cans together:

Carlsberg beer cans are to be stuck together with glue as it becomes one of the first brewers to abandon plastic rings.

The Danish firm said the move, which has been heralded as a world-first, to attach its multi-packs with adhesive will reduce the use of plastic to package products by 75 per cent.

After a three-year development process, Carlsberg insists the dots of glue bonding its new "Snap Packs" are strong enough to withstand journeys from shelves to homes, yet sufficiently brittle to break when twisted.

8 comments:

  1. CindyNovember 30, 2011 at 11:59 AM

    Why do they keep making these things? Seems to me a perfect opportunity for an enterprising inventor to come up with a safe alternative.

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  2. SteveNovember 30, 2011 at 12:08 PM

    I've seen a bunch of U.S. microbrew cans that now come with a different style of "topper" to hold the cans together. If they can do it, so should everybody else:

    http://www.kenairiverbrewing.com/Welcome.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. antoine0387November 30, 2011 at 2:55 PM

    The Pediasure that we get for our son has a very similar plastic thing holding the six bottles together. Whats nice about it is that it has perforations that make it very easy to tear it up and remove the holes by hand. This makes it much less dangerous in regards to getting stuck in it IMO.

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  4. AmyNovember 30, 2011 at 5:02 PM

    I wish there'd be a warning for this picture.

    This is terrible and sickening and I feel ill now.

    ReplyDelete
  5. asha November 30, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    Holy cow!

    ReplyDelete
  6. ColinNovember 30, 2011 at 7:27 PM

    My understanding is that the current design has weak points so they break, I make a habit of slitting the rings with a knife before going into recycling.

    ReplyDelete
  7. RobbNovember 30, 2011 at 11:27 PM

    I've been cutting those apart since I was a little boy. and would make anyone I lived with do it too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ChemsolverOctober 11, 2018 at 11:14 AM

    That reminded me of the Simpsons episode when Lisa showed Mr. Burns that fish get caught in those plastic can holders...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-QeTbmchvQ

    ReplyDelete