In 1992, a shipping crate containing app. 28.000 rubber duckies fell overboard from a ship that was carrying it from Hong Kong to the USA. The crate evidently opened somehow and the duckies were spilled. Now, after almost 20 years, they’ve been used to track marine currents as well as to examine, how plastic degrades over time.
Some have been found along the shores of Hawaii and Alaska, and some were even found frozen in the arctic ice.
The scary part is that after 20 years some of the duckies still show up in good shape, but also scary is the sheer amount of garbage that has been found in the oceans across the globe during this study. Is it just me or is this more upsetting than all the up-in-armness about not using gasoline to power our cars anymore and instead using plastic battery cells, which still creates CO2 while burning coal to create the electricity needed, to recharge them… that is of course, unless solar power was used, which would actually SOLVE the problem. Wait… never mind about the solar power. I shouldn’t have said that.
In all seriousness though, what’s with all the resistance to using alternative, cleaner ways to achieve electrical power? It’s not like a solar or wind powered electrical plant would be any uglier than a normal coal, water or nuclear power plant now would it?
In an age where any ordinary household of two adults and two children might have over 20 power adapters and chargers, electricity already accounts for a very important part of our power consumption. Do we really need to add our vehicles to that? Especially if we consider that modern gasoline powered engines are incredibly fuel efficient.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that we all go out and purchase the biggest, baddest SUV possible, but shouldn’t there be an in-between range where we can all be comfortable?
