That stat about plastic straws vs fishing nets finally got me

I used to be all in on the plastic straw ban thing, thought I was helping. Then I saw the actual numbers from a beach cleanup in my town last month. Straws made up 1% of the trash, but abandoned fishing nets and gear were like 30% of the marine debris. I realized I was focused on the easy feel-good fix instead of the real problem. Now I'm more annoyed at companies that don't recycle their gear than at someone using a straw. Does anyone else feel like we're getting distracted by the small stuff while the big polluters slide by?

3 comments

3 Comments

kelly63820d ago

Saw a report that said 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is just fishing nets. Makes all the straw guilt feel pretty pointless when the real mess is still out there.

kim.jake20d ago

Nets are definitely a huge problem, but that doesn't excuse our plastic straw habit either lol.

victor77920d ago

Yeah I read about that too. There was an article I saw last year from some oceanography group that said ghost fishing gear is the single biggest threat to marine life right now. It sits there on the bottom just catching stuff forever, or it drifts around tangling up whales and turtles. And the crazy thing is most of it is from big commercial operations who don't bother to mark or recover their nets. I don't think giving up straws is useless, but man, it puts things in perspective when you see the actual scale of what's out there.