Plastic Numbers; What Do They Mean?

Here's a little chart I created to help explain what the numbers on certain plastics stand for. (Click to enlarge)

Pictures found through google images

I hope you find this helpful!

Global Winter Wonderland! Extreme Recycling!

Had an arctic BLAST at Global Winter Wonderland here in Atlanta, Georgia!

It was my friends birthday and a few of us decided to get some tickets to this once a year carnival/amusement park to celebrate and hang out with each other.

They had a ton of different light statues set up and it was SO beautiful!

Some of you may be wondering "what does this have to do with ocean or environment awareness?"

In front of the Phoenix!

Art Meets Awareness

There's an art website called devianart.com
On that website, there's an artist called Yuumei.
Some of her art pieces, are so wonderful.

This one is my personal favorite she titled "Guilty"

Check out more of her art at:
www.yuumei.deviantart.com

Overpopulation Cartoon

By BlueMenpachi

You might have to zoom in (ctrl +) in order to find all the themes.

STYROFOAM: What is it? How is it made? Why is it bad? What can you do to help?

Good Morning Readers!

So today's post is on STYROFOAM!

4 questions will be answered throughout this post:

1) What is styrofoam?

2) How is it made?

3) Why is it bad?

4) What can you do to help? 

An Evening with Plastic at Kahului Harbor! 10/15/2012

Okay. I will admit. The last two weekends I was not at Kahului Harbor doing my weekly clean ups.
And I regret not being out there because of THIS!

International Coastal Clean Up! Sept. 15, 2012, Kahului Harbor

Saturday September 15, 2012 was the International Coastal Clean Up Day!

A worldwide (for lack of better words) revolution where clubs, organizations and individuals around the world get together to clean up their beaches.

A group that I usually hang out with went to Kahekili Beach Park in Lahaina, Maui; However, I had to work in the morning, so I missed participating with them.

Instead, after I  finished work, I went down to Kahului Harbor to the portion I call Section 1, to collect marine debris!

I had started at 11:55 am.

Kahului Harbor Clean Up Log: Week 1

Greetings Readers!

Sunday August 12, 2012 marks the beginning of my weekly logged adventures to Kahului Harbor. Every Sunday, from 12:00pm to 5:00pm (possibly earlier in the day), I will head to Kahului Harbor to pick up trash and plastic debris which is brought in from the tides.

The amount of plastic debris out there is RIDICULOUS.

Tiny bits of plastic are scattered EVERYWHERE and is even mixed in with the rocks because of the ebb and flow of the tide.

Maui's 3 Can Plan

Yeah Maui County!

FINALLY a recycling program is happening!

Starting August 17, 2012, neighborhoods in South Maui will be a part of Phase 1 Curbside Recycling!

We have been issued two new trash cans. A Blue one and a Green one, where select items acceptable for recycling, will be collected by Maui’s Oplala Pickers! (aka, Garbage Men)

The Brown Cart is for rubbish only.

The Blue Cart is used for Mixed Recyclables. Items allowed are:

• ·         Corrugated cardboard
• ·         Boxboard (ex; cereal boxes, egg cartons)
• ·         Juice cartons (ex; Milk cartons, pog cartons etc)
• ·         Paper bags
• ·         Newspaper (but no phone books)
• ·         Junk mail and envelopes
• ·         Magazines
• ·         Office Paper
• ·         #1 Plastic bottles (ketchup, shoyu and soda bottles)
• ·         #2 Plastic bottles (pog jugs, laundry soap jugs, medicine bottles etc)
• ·         #1 and #2 Containers (plastic bento containers, jamba juice cups, strawberry and tofu containers)
• ·         Dairy Tubs and Lids (sour cream containers, poi containers)
• ·         Beverage Cans (regular Hi5 aluminum cans)
• ·         Food cans (ex; spam, pineapple, dog food cans)
• ·         Aluminum Foil and Trays

However, NO METAL and NO GLASS items are allowed to be recycled for they contaminate the other materials. (Glass shards and rust I suppose)

No PLASTIC BAGS are allowed in this cart either and all beverage and food residue must be rinsed out.

The Green Cart is used for Greenwaste. Item allowed are:

Stumbleupon.com for Creative Recycling Ideas~

I just recently joined this site called stumbleupon.com in hopes that it could help broaden my view of the internet. When you join the site, it comes to a page where you can click on things that interest you. Dance, Art, Games, Music, Health. There's a bunch more, so I'm going to name them all.
I clicked on the things that interested me, then clicked the stumble button at the top left and commenced my stumbling!
I can't remember exactly what the first page was that I stumbled upon, but I remember seeing an EPIC treehouse, tried out this one game where you had to type to shoot your enemies, came across some WICKED life sketches. Stumbleupon.com really has a LOT to stumble upon!
Afterward, my blogger brain kicked in, so I decided to specify my search and I typed in "recycling" in the search bar.
Let's just say, this was a BRILLIANT IDEA. xD
I came across so many different ways to recycle plastic bottles, or tin cans.
I snipped a few pictures to add:

Lipoa Beach Walk: TRASH FINDINGS

After Maui had that big rain, we've still been feeling the after effects. The water at Lipoa was even more brown than usual and there was drift wood all over the entrance with bits of trash, or shells.
When I was at Lipoa again this morning. I decided to pick up what ever little trash I could along the way.
And here's what I found:

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle! Step Two: REUSE

Continuing on from the 3 R’s post
These are my examples on how to perform them to help protect the environment.

The second R is Reuse:

1.)You can reuse plastic and glass bottles many times over.
Bottled water is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. Water is available through your tap! The only thing you buy when you buy bottled water is… lower quality water and the plastic.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle! Step One: REDUCE

{{This blog post will be separated into 3 different blogs}}
The 3 R's to help protect the environment.
Here are some ways I've thought of and have even used to help perform the 3 R's.

I had to limit the 3 R's to only 3 examples each. My list i made was way too long and I didn't want readers to get bored sifting thru all my examples. If you'd like the full list I created, drop me an email or leave a comment.

First R is Reduce:

Plastic Poison List

Everyday, people use something plastic. It could be disposable or even a long term use of that particular plastic. But when you're done, you'll probably end up throwing it away right?
Here are some of the things I've thought about that people use that end up in the trash, that goes to the landfill and in some way or another, the ocean:

Pollution Awareness for Maui: Ocean Acidification and Poisonous Plastics

Earlier this morning in my marine biology class, our presentations for our semester projects were due. I chose to do my presentation on Pollution Awareness.
Basically, a lot of people really are NOT fully aware of how every single day they are polluting the Earth and Oceans in some way.
I started my presentation with Ocean Acidification. Ocean acidification is when there is too much CO2 being released into out atmosphere and when our atmosphere touches the ocean (yes, it literally touches the ocean) it mixes with the water and basically makes an acid.

Field Trip adventure to Kanaha Beach Park on Maui; Seaweed collection, Sea cucumbers and rubbish

Today for my ocean marine identification class, we were supposed to go to a specific beach in Maalaea to go snorkeling for seaweed. But since conditions were not prime anymore for snorkeling, she cancelled class and told us to pick a beach and collect some seaweed and identify them by scientific name.

Me and my friend, Keneke, chose Kanaha beach park in central Maui for our seaweeds.

We found a lot of different kinds of seaweed: Caulerpa racemosa; a kind of green marine algae that looks like it grape vines. Ulva fasciata; also known as sea lettuce. Amansia glomerata; when this algae clumps together it reminds me of a hamburger!

(Oh! One thing about seaweed that some people don't know is that it is also called marine algae. It technically is NOT a plant, it is an algae).

Anyways, we found a lot of different kinds of algae. We got to that beach around 3:00 p.m. and what i thought was funny was that there were a LOT of sea cucumbers washed up on the shoreline mixed in with the seaweed that was washed up too. I think in total I found 15 of them. All of them the same species and around 3 inches long and 3/4 of an inch wide. They were all washed up!

It wasn't too bright with sunlight but they must have been washed up for a while because some of them were seriously dried up...

For a little bit I was surprised there were so many sea cucumbers, but when I thought of the location of the beach it kind of clicked in my head.

There must be so many sea cucumbers because about 1/2 a mile before Kanaha beach was a wastewater treatment plant. I know that sea cucumbers are detritovores and they eat all of the dead and waste things on the bottom of the sea floor. So maybe since the tide is low in the morning then became high later in the afternoon, they got stuck on the beach!

Something else that I saw that really bothered me was the trash... I collected some and I was able to take a picture with my laptop camera.

There was a snorkel, some suji line and lead weight, a hair clip, a yellow cap used for electrical line, an old battery pack cover, a vienna sausage can, a bit of a water bottle label and this other unknown white clip.
And this only came from 1/8 of the beach we were on.
Makes you think, doesn't it??