Last year I gave myself a goal to choose one environmental issue I am particularly passionate about, and rather than send money to an organization, create a hands on project where I can see the difference I make. Without too many deep thoughts involved, I decided to figure out how much garbage I was personally responsible for putting into the ocean, and then go remove it. I went and got my diver's certification, and...well..that's as far as I got!
There is a part of me that realizes this is ridiculous. At the beginning of the day I believe we ultimately need to be changing large systems so that we aren't forced to live in a way that is inherently damaging to the planet. In the middle of the day, I believe we each need to do each do our part both personally and politically. At the end of the day, I believe we need to address the damage that we did in the past and fix it.
So this New Year's Eve, I made the resolution again, but this time I opted to ask everyone in the Internets to help me, (I also posed a challenge on Current for people to join me and choose just ONE green thing to focus on and, ask us for our help. So far 13 people have taken the 1 Green Thing Challenge.)
Thankfully people have been sending in great suggestions, and Derk figured out the following calculation: 14 billion pounds of garbage was being dumped into the ocean every year - US is responsible for 1/3 (at least) - - so 4.6 billion pounds each year Divide that by the 304,059,724 Americans on record - and you get ... 15.1286067731... lbs. (see the blog post for live links to his resources)
According to Derk's calculation, 15.1286067731 x 37 (my age in 2010) if I am to remove the garbage out of the ocean that I am personally responsible for: I'll be removing 559.758422, aka 560 pounds of garbage out of the ocean.
Today's questions I would love help with:
1. What does 560 pounds of garbage look like?
2. Where should I store it?
3. I need to contact a