Recycling Why is it important?

Recycling Why is it important? Write your response in your Science Journal. Remember to put down the question, response, and today’s date.

How do we classify resources ?

Write your response in your Science Journal. Remember to put down the question, response, and today’s date.

Renewable – is a natural resource that can be used and replaced over a relatively short time. *although many resources are renewable, humans often use them more quickly than they can be replaced. (trees, water, fish) Non-renewable – is a natural resource that cannot be replaces or that can be replaced only over thousands or millions of years. (coal, natural gas, and iron ore)

Recycling  We can classify resources are renewable and nonrenewable. Which one is water?

Under what circumstances would water not be considered renewable? Raise your hand if your would like to share your answer.

Imagine a world without recycling What would it look like?

“Water covers more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, making our rivers, lakes and oceans the lifeblood of our planet. Many of these bodies of water may be out of sight and out of mind, but our health may depend on their protection.”

Two Ocean Debris Centers 1.) The Sargasso Sea in the middle of the Atlantic and 2.) The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Both areas are encircled by swirling ocean currents, and are said to collect their debris in the center. Scientists believe the world's largest garbage dump isn't on land…it's in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches from the coast of California to Japan, and it's estimated to be twice the size of Texas. In some places, the floating debris—estimated to be about 90 percent plastic—goes 90 feet deep. Elsewhere, there are six times more pieces of plastic than plankton, the main food source for many sea animals.

The endangered leatherback sea turtle, which migrates to San Francisco Bay on a 5,000 mile journey from the South Pacific, can mistake plastic bags for the jellyfish that constitute its diet.

Green sea turtle eating a jellyfish Crab eating a jellyfish

A green sea turtle is caught in a derelict fishing net in Hawaii. Sea turtles breathe at the surface, so if they get entangled and cannot escape, they drown. Revised July 29,

N. AmericaEurope S. America Africa Asia Oceania Africa Sargasso Sea above is the image A gyre is a large wind, which combines with ocean currents to produce a swirling vortex. One researcher used an analogy for a vortex as a toilet bowl. Gyres are cause by the Coriolis effect. The North Pacific Gyre is also referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Garbage from land and sea is collected by ocean currents and eventually gets stuck in these vortexes. A lot of what is trapped in this vortex is non-biodegradable (doesn’t break down over time) bits of plastic. Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Patch is created in the gyre of the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone N. America Asia Oceania a/commons/1/1f/North_Pacific_Sub tropical_Convergence_Zone.jpg

This "sea" is a two-million-square-mile chunk of the Atlantic Ocean stretching from the West Indies to the Azores. Although the sea is bordered on all sides by circulating currents - the Gulf Stream to the west and north, the Canary Current to the east and the North Equatorial Current to the south - in its interior lies a vast calm.

It is here where huge patches of sargassum collect en masse. The weed is drawn to the center of the sea by two different methods: the earth's rotation and the process of evaporation. The rotation of the earth spins the currents to the center of the sea, which carry the weed along with them. And, since the water in the center of the sea is relatively stable, it evaporates faster, creating small surface currents that bring in water to replace that lost to evaporation.

“When plastic in the ocean is eaten by living organisms, the toxic chemicals within are released into that organism. In phytoplankton, toxic chemicals are consumed and then passed long the food chain up to higher trophic levels, and the concentration of these chemicals increases exponentially at each level, in a process called biomagnification.” (website - Science by Paddy)

Where did this trash come from? Marine biologists estimate that about 80 percent of the litter is from land, either dumped directly into waterways or blown into rivers and streams from states as far away as Iowa, and 20% from ships at sea. Charles Moore estimates that garbage from Asia takes about one year to reach the gyre, and about five years from the United states.

Like his grandfather, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, Fabien Cousteau has devoted his life to exploring and protecting the world's oceans and sea life. Many of those affected by the enormous garbage swirl—like sea birds, turtles and beluga whales—can't speak for themselves. "They get caught in these nets, or they swallow some of these bottle caps," Fabien says. Experts say plastic trash has already killed millions of sea birds and marine mammals. In one case, pieces of plastic and a cigarette lighter were found in the stomach of a dead albatross. Beluga whales are also suffering. Fabien says some of these marine mammals have been diagnosed with breast cancer, which may be caused by the chemicals they're ingesting. Oprah.com

The remnants of a Albatross chick which was fed plastic by its parents; the chick was unable to eject the plastic, resulting in death by either starvation or choking

Fabien says this pollution will eventually come back to haunt humans and find its way onto our dinner plates. "The pesticides that you spray on your dandelions run off into the oceans and end up in the food chain, which ends up back in our plates," he says. "It's a closed system. Everything's connected. We're all connected with the planet in very fundamental ways." Fabien says the Pacific Ocean garbage swirl isn't unique. In fact, every ocean and many major rivers have them. "This one happens to be the largest one," he says.

Fabien says that when we protect the seas, we protect ourselves. "The ocean belongs to all of us, but there's no single entity or no single nation that's there to protect it," he says. "We need to be able to network and really all care about it and all protect the oceans." If not for yourself, do it for your children. "You wouldn't let a child open up a cabinet under the sink and start tasting the chemicals down there," Fabien says. "So why would you dump those chemicals down the drain and have them end up on your plate, which you then feed to your child?"

Conserving Natural Resources The 3R’s of conservation: Reduce – conserving a resource. It means using it sparingly and not wasting it Reuse- use items again and again, instead of throwing them away and creating new ones. (clothing, canvas bags) Recycle – refers to the use of products made from reprocessed used items. (paper, plastic, glass)

Action Plan What can we do, as a class, to help our world? YouTube. Search “plastic garbage island ocean.” ex.html php?screen=NewRubric Extend Art & Blue Planet video Oceans