May 1, 2012 – Team Marine

May 1, 2012May 1, 2012

Safe to surf?

While surfing last weekend, Mr. Kay noticed that he wasn’t alone…

Floating around him were various fragments of what were once single-use plastics. So he sat on his surfboard and collected as much trash that he could fit into his wetsuit. Kay collected all sorts of plastic ranging from plastic bags, wrappers, bottle caps, straws, to lots of unidentifiable fragments. After school today, with the help of a few Marine Biology students, Team Marine laid each piece of plastic flat and tried to cover as much concrete as possible to find the total surface area. While doing this, we made note of all the different recognizable brand names we found. They included: Doritos, Zip-loc, Reeses, Crunch, David sunflower seeds, Twix, BIC, Munchies, Kit Kat, Oreos, Gatorade, 7-select, Aquafina, Giradelli, Lays, 99¢ stores, Hersheys, Bimbo, Haribo, Corn nuts, Turbos, Life Styles, Air Heads, Cheetos, Pirate’s Booty, Penguinos, Fritos, Bakenetts, Sparklet, Orangina, Lucky’s, Wonka, FritoLay, Snickers, Nature Valley, Ice Breakers, and McDonald’s.

There were a total of 651 pieces of plastic that made up for 6.973m² in surface area. Some of the plastic pieces had been colonized by algae/barnacles and there was one plastic bag that had a dead fish inside! The fish probably didn’t see the bag floating around the ocean, so it accidentally swam into it and when it couldn’t escape, it smothered. This can only mean one thing…

PLASTICS HAVE GOT TO GO!

May 1, 2012May 9, 2012

Ocean Plastic Underestimated?

Remember when the ocean shores were covered with plastic confetti? Researches now believe the clear seas are caused by wind driving large amounts of plastic pollution deeper into the sea. A new study has theorized that past estimates of marine plastic pollution has been greatly underestimated. “By factoring in the wind, which is fundamentally important to the physical behavior, you’re increasing the rigor of the science and doing something that has a major impact on the data,” , an oceanographer at the University of Washington. After a study including samples collected from multiple ranges of depths rom the surface of the ocean to as far as 100 feet down, Proskurowski and his team concluded that there is two and a half more times the plastic waste than recorded before. In high winds, the amount of plastic trash recorded in the ocean could be underestimated by a factor of 27. The scope of the (plastic debris) problem is not just at the very surface but goes down to 20 meters or so, and that plastic is distributed throughout this layer,” Proskurowski said during an interview. Proskurowski and his team plan on publishing their research to encourage other scientists to conduct research of their own and spread the word.

May 1, 2012May 24, 2012

Generation Earth’s Streets to the Sea Challenge

On Thursday, May 26th, 2011 our S2S team went down to Disney Studios in Burbank for the recognition event. Here, each team would be judged by hand-picked judges as well as our very own competitors. All teams had to set up a booth displaying all we’ve done for the challenge and give 5 min presentations to the judges and other teams. We got to see lots of cool things while going around to the other schools’ booths! We learned about permeable cement, gardening , and we even got to take home some cool stamps made out of single-use bottle caps! Although we didn’t win, we still had a great experience and loved to see others our age with the same enthusiasm that we have towards protecting our environment. Thankyou so much Generation Earth, Disney studios, and ofcourse, our fellow eco-beasts! Congrats to Norwalk High School for winning 1st place among High School Teams and Walter Reed Middle School for winning 1st place among the middle school teams. Great job everyone, keep Eco-beastin’ it!