National Geographic has a suggestion for a New Year’s resolution that could help extend the life of many species — and perhaps the entire planet. Resolve to use less plastic in 2019.
A series of public service announcements from National Geographic titled Planet or Plastic poses the goal as a series of resolutions, such as: Quit drinking — from plastic. According to Planet or Plastic, nine million tons of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already floating in our oceans. Worldwide, 73 percent of beach litter is plastic: filters from cigarette butts, bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, grocery bags and polystyrene containers. More than 40 percent of plastic is used just once, then tossed.
National Geographic lists “six things you can do (and feel no pain).”
1. Give up plastic bags
2. Skip straws, unless you have medical needs
3. Pass up plastic bottles; get a refillable water bottle
4. Avoid plastic packaging. And while you’re at it, give up plastic plates and cups
5. Recycle what you can
6. Don’t litter
There’s also a Kids vs. Plastic list website with suggestions for planet-minded citizens of any age.
On the topic of recycling, Sunflower Diversified Services recently added a recycling receptacle on the city-owned parking lot at 18th and Williams, to the south of “little” Dillons and across from Park Elementary School.
We’ve all seen those end-of-year stories about celebrities we lost in the past year. Yahoo News reported on the animals that went extinct in 2018. Three bird species are now officially extinct: the Po’ouli from the forests of Hawaii and two Brazilian songbirds: the Cryptic Treehunter and the Alagoas Foliage-gleaner.
In the 2011 animated Disney movie “Rio,” a pair of bird characters named Blu and Jewel were the last pair of Spix’s Macaws in the world. In 2018, the real species of Spix’s Macaws is now believed to be extinct in the wild. According to BirdLife International, Spix’s Macaw is one of eight bird species primed to have their extinctions either confirmed or deemed highly likely.
It wasn’t just birds. Animals that are now extinct that existed a quarter-century ago include the West African Black Rhinoceros, Baiji White Dolphin and Pyrenean Ibex. This past year, the world’s last remaining male Northern White Rhinoceros died.
Using less plastic might not have saved these species, but it could help. According to OneKind Planet, extinctions are mostly driven by loss of habitat as farming land expands and forests are cut down, along with pollution, the introduction of alien species, and over-fishing or over-hunting. Increasingly, climate change is thought to drive extinctions.
In other words, our actions do matter.
