Why We are Here

 from left to right, sitting in front: Bar--ah..nevermind.

To get an A, certainly, d'oh. To advocate certain environmental issue is compulsory in the class of Seminar on the Environment, and is regarded as the proper replacement of the Final Exam. So this blog is pretty serious.

But of course, there's something more than getting a good mark. Our main objective here is to spread the idea of green living--not because it's trendy, but because we only got one Earth, and ergo, one chance to save it.

yeah, just like this

In our year, the importance of fashion has grown prominent. And so has the idea of environmental conservation. Fashion gives big impacts towards the environment, and in a sense, vice versa. But, fashion could cause a collateral damage towards our Earth. So we're gonna focus on giving green fashion tips on a particular matter.

no, not like that.

In this blog, we would focus on clothing issues, especially the distribution phase. You readers could imagine how much plastic material would go wasted on every purchase of a clothing: sometimes, it is even plausible to wrap a purchased product with more than one plastic materials, while plastics is full of carbon, the notorious green house gas. Ergo, we believe that it's necessary to reduce the amount of plastics used in the industry, and one easiest way for us consumers to do that, is by rejecting any plastic bag to wrap our newlybought clothes, and moving to non plastic bags.

In this blog, we would advocate this issue in two phases: First, the closer look at the problem, identifying whether there is a considerable awareness among clothing stores to reduce plastic usage, or among us--the consumers. Second, we would provide reasons why plastics is so discouraged, and why its alternative is always better.

Aside from our issue, this blog would also be kept update with trivia and games regarding the environment. See? Being green could be easy!

Pulau Sampah dan Plastik : Dampak dari penggunaan dan pengolahan plastik.

Penggunaan plastik adalah hal yang telah menjadi bagian dari budaya, fashion, dan kehidupan manusia. Selain karena memang murah, plastik dianggap lebih mudah dibuat di bandingkan harus membuat tas kain.

Namun dalam sejarah manusia, banyak penelitian yang mengungkap dampak negative dari penggunaan plastik tersebut, dari dampak kimiawi hasil dari produksi plastik tersebut, sampai dari dampak negative ketika penguraian alamiah yang terjadi di alam.

Salah satu dampak yang ditimbulkan dari kesalahan management pengolahan limbah plastik, adalah terbentuknya Pulau Sampah di lautan lepas di berbagai belahan samudra di Bumi ini, yang berdampak pada kehidupan biota laut. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch yang berada di lautan Pasific di temukan pada tahun 1988, North Atlantic Garbage Patch juga ditemukan di lautan Atlantik pada tahun 1976, dan yang paling baru adalah penemuan Indian Ocean Garbage Patch di tahun 2010. Semua Garbage Patch itu adalah pusat, pusaran dari arus samudera –samudera tersebut, dimana di saat mulai terbentuk semacam Pulau Sampah yang terdiri dari sampah-sampah baik dalam bentuk besar maupun bentuk yang lebih kecil berkumpul, membentuk semacam pulau atau bisa disebut sebagai bubur sampah di tengah lautan.

Banyak jurnalis dan advokasi lingkungan yang menyatakan bahwasanya pulau sampah yang terbentuk di Great Pacific Garbage telah sebesar benua Amerika itu sendiri, sumber lain mengatakan bahwasanya pulau itu sudah berbentuk sebesar benua Afrika, namun laopran resmi yang dibuat oleh National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) menyatakan bahwasanya pulau sampah itu terbentuk seluas dua kali negara bagian Texas.

Bagaimana pulau itu bisa terbentuk? Pulau itu terbentuk dikarenakan sampah-sampah dari daratan dan lautan yang di bawa arus ke laut lepas yang akhirnya nya terbawa arus lautan menuju ke pusat aruh tersebut bertemu di samudera. Akhirnya sampah-sampah dari penjuru dunia yang terbawa arus itu terkumpul dan tertumpuk disana, menjadi sebuah pulau, atau bubur sampah lautan. Hasil penelitian menyebutkan 80-90 % dari keseluruhan sampah yang membentuk pulau sampah tersebut berasal dari sampah plastik, dan 80 % dari sampah plastik tersebut berasal dari daratan, dimana 20%nya berasal dari lautan (dari kapal-kapal yang berlayar disana), dan lautan sampah ini semakin membesar tiap tahunnya, dikarenakan jumlah penggunaan plastik yang semakin besar pula.

Pulau Sampah ini menurut penelitian memiliki dampak yang signifikan bagi biota laut yang ada di sekitar laut tersebut, seperti permasalahan dengan sampah – sampah pelastik yang sering sekali akhirnya membuat penyu, ikan,dan burung tersangkut, sehingga bisa berdampak pada kematian, lalu banyak kasus ditemukan dimana banyak burung dan ikan-ikan yang mati karena salah mengira sampah-sampah plastik dalam bentuk kecil itu adalah makanan, sehingga banyak yang mati karena keracunan, maupun mati karena tersedak. Permasalahan lainnya adalah zat kimia dari plastik itu sendiri, yang mana plastik tersebut yang terkena air garam dan sinar matahari langsung lebih cepat terurai menjadi molecular yang lebih kecil, dan plastik mengandung beberapa kandungan zat kimia yang beracun bagi dan bisa berdampak pada keracunan maupun perubahan genetis yang terjadi bagi yang tereskpose maupun mengonsumsinya, sehingga apabila ikan-ikan itu telah teracuni, maka manusia yang mengkonsumsinya juga memiliki potensi untuk mengalami keracunan karena mengkonsumsi ikan yang terkontaminasi racun.

Sehingga apa yang bisa kita lakukan? Walaupun telah dilakukan upaya untuk mendaur ulang sampah di lautan, dan membersihkan tumpukan sampah di lautan, cara tersebut masih lah sah sangat kecil effektifitasnya, dikarenakan jumlah sampahnya yang selalu bertambah dan memang berjumlah besar dalam radius yang luas pula, sehingga memang cara yang terbaik saat ini adalah dengan mengurangi jumlah pelastik yang digunakan dalam setiap kegiatan yang manusia lakukan, dengan mengunakannya berkali kali, ataupun menggunakan biodegradable bags, yang lebih ramah lingkungan, ataupun membawa tas atau kantong belanjaan sendiri sehingga bisa mengurangi jumlah penggunaan plastik , ditambah dengan cara mendaur ulamg plastik itu sendiri. Mari jadika dunia in menjadi dunia yang lebih baik dan sehat di masa depan.

Sumber:

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/translating-uncle-sam/stories/what-is-the-great-pacific-ocean-garbage-patch

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/a-2nd-garbage-patch-plastic-soup-seen-in-atlantic

http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/trashislands.htm

Four Reasons Why Plastics are Bad

Hello, readers! :) In this post, we’d like to outline why plastic pays big contribution to the exacerbation of Earth’s condition. So, brace yourself! *EXAGGERATED DRUM SOUND* :

1. Plastics kill at least 100,000 animals including birds, penguins, whales, turtles, and dolphins per year. This is because plastic bags are now everywhere, and animals oftenly mistake plastic bags with edible materials, and eventually being choked and killed while eating.

*The Killing Machine*

2. Contrary to common opinion, plastics are expensive. Well, it is indeed cheap to produce one, but total cost burdened to retailers who give it for free could amount to USD 4million annually.

 3. Plastics make litters. Face it—are we not too lazy to reuse it? Sometimes they got wrinkled, sometimes they’re torn or got a big hole, and sometimes we just lost them. There’s a big chance our plastic bags would end up in dump site, badly needing hundreds of years to decompose. Plastic litters—and it last. It is also revealed that only one percent of all plastic bags out there that are eventually recycled.

 

pretty nasty o.O

4. Plastics is made from non-renewable resources, that is, crude oil and natural gas. Not to mention that those substances, if imported, would need a long flight from Middle East to eventually arrive in our country.

You may not realize this, but the plastic bags used by human worldwide could pile up up to 500 billion up to 1 trillion each year. Yes, that’s a big number. Should it not be obvious that reducing plastic bags number is something we have to prioritize?

In Searching for Alternatives..

So, we all understand that conventional plastic bags are bad. What's there to replace it? You might be curious. Aside from plastic bags, clothing stores are usually equipped with paper bags and/or biodegradable plastic bags. Let's see what our little investigation reveals:

Hypothema #1: Paper bags are no better than plastic ones

Evidences:

1. Paper bags are no energy saver. It took four times as much energy to manufacture paper bags than polyethylene ones. To produce it, people would also need to use water twenty times as much water plastic bags use. Paper bags also comes from trees, so it has a big potential to destroy forests. Each year in US only, the consumption of 10 million plastic bags sacrificed 14 million of trees.

2. Paper bags take much less energy to recycle than plastic ones, but the number of them that are actually recycled is only 5%. So much to be eco-friendlier, eh?

and it could also lead to a trainwreck of plastic surgery

Hypothema #2:Something's terribly wrong about biodegradable plastic bags
Evidences:

1. Biodegradable plastic bags contain additives to help them degrade into smaller pieces more quickly with the help of heat or light. But a report said adding the metal compounds to the plastics did not improve their environmental performance and ''potentially gives rise to certain negative effects''. The same report also casts doubts on our ability to exactly estimate the time these "eco-friendly" bags need to decompose.

2. These bags would never decompose in the absence of oxygen---while in landfill, oxygen barely exists. The "solution" would be throwing them away to marine ecosystem in hope for faster decomposition, but as the consequence, they would pollute oceans and possibly intoxicate sea creatures when they release chemical substance during decomposition!

Plastic Ocean, as oppose to Pacific Ocean.

The bottom line is, try to reach for something that doesn't need to be recycled in order to be reused. Probably something like this?

PS: We don't know what 'hypothema' means :)