Waste

November 5,2013, RealNews24  by Brian

Live Free Live Natural. 

July 29, 2013, a sperm whale was stranded on Tershelling, a northern island in the Netherlands. A rescue attempt was attempted, but unfortunately the whale died. A young adult at 13.5 meters was taken for a necropsy at the port of Harlington. The sperm whale had plastic in its stomach, an increasing common phenomenon say researchers at the Biodiversity Centre Naturalis. In  March of this year, a 10 meter long sperm whale washed up on Spain’s South Coast. This whale had swallowed 59 different plastic items totaling over 37 pounds. Most of this plastic consisted of transparent sheeting used to build greenhouses in Almeria and Grenada for the purpose of tomatoes for the European market. The rest was plastic bags, nine meters of rope, two stretches of hosepipe, two small flower pots, and a plastic spray canister. Cause of death was intestinal blockage.

weww.atlantadailyworld.com - August 15, 2013 - Foluke Nunn

'A group of African American citizens filed suit today against their city government in Rochelle, Ga. for discharging the city’s raw sewage onto their properties.

White residents of Rochelle live predominately on the south side of the city’s railroad track. African Americans live largely on the north.  The residents say the city has repaired and updated its sewage pipes on the south side of the tracks but has let repairs lag on the African American side.  As a result, untreated sewage backs up and overflows into the streets and the yards of residents on the north side of the tracks. 

The residents are being represented by Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization whose Florida office is handling the litigation. The Clean Water Act suit, filed in the United States District Court, Middle District of Georgia, seeks to stop the unpermitted discharges of raw sewage from manholes, broken pipes and a ditch.' ...

submitted by Albert Gomez

good.is - July 11, 2012

While there's been plenty of media pointing out or raising awareness about the disaster submerged right beneath sea level— the mountain-sized patch of plastic and other garbage that's been collecting in oceans around the world, particularly in the Pacific—there's less attention to some of the solutions that are currently in the works. Part of the reason is that the problem seems so huge (indeed, it's beyond the point of return) and so distant that it's not necessarily the easiest to conceive of steps to take action against.

Yet a crew of big-thinking designers has a concept for a trash-skimming and sensor-equipped "marine drone" that could detect trash in the ocean and scoop it into its net to be recycled. The drone is designed to navigate the ocean for two weeks at a time and would use an infrasound system to keep fish at bay.