janwax said:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qT-rOXB6NI (the music's intrusive)
https://www.usatoday.com/story...

Why couldn't our government clean this up, and enlist the help of other governments who contribute to this trash? It kills sealife. I hope some of the presidential nominees address this human-caused mess.

Yes, the government should do more as well. We can vote for those who stand up for safeguarding the environment, but that doesn't mean that they will win the election. I am constantly signing petitions, but again, I don't know how effective that is. Still, it is better to try than not at all.

I think the problem is more global & isn't really a "Presidential political election issue", but a social one, caused by people, that do not dispose of their trash & waste properly. Not every Country is set up, for proper trash disposal. I'm fairly sure, most of it, comes from coastal Asian Countries & those with rivers that flow into the Pacific. I think they are likely the cause of the majority of it & I do not know how that is addressed, other than by studying the trash, to find out the major contributors of it all . Then it should probably be addressed, through foreign Ambassadors, by making those responsible for creating it, the ones financially responsible for costs of clean up, by fining those specific Countries, so they stop.
Maybe if they have to pay "deposits" on plastic bottles, as in some States do here, at least that could be somewhat effective with diminished volume of plastic bottles, ending up in the Ocean..

The irony of some of that garbage, is probably due to climate change. If it is found to be at least partially due to Typhoons, then it was unavoidable, due to an extreme natural event, made worse by climate change intensifying the effect. Though Tsunamis, are usually due to natural earthquakes & rather unavoidable disasters ,creating tons of trash...

Education, here and abroad, is the answer.
Make less trash!

I participate in local decisions by writing my mayor and council people, state and federal representatives and others. I donate to the Sierra Club. (a small amount) I have agitated for years to get rid of plastic bags in our city of about 250,000 people. Finally we have a mayor, and enough push at the state level to do it. This one just said, 'we are going to ban them: after many others said, "Oh the State has to do it". I have been studying the sewer system because we have a combined rain water and sewage system. We dump it into the Hudson River. Yes, that is right. You heard me. The only way to understand it is to get the sewer map and read the reports on the system. I got the sewer map at the sewer authority. It looks like an old Rube Goldberg contraption. The more you find out the better equipped you are to ask your local representatives why they are allowing certain things to happen. Like building luxury condos on top of a permitted sewer overflow point. The Federal Government used to help subsidize big infrastructure like sewers. Now there is no one there who wants to do that. It affects everything. At my own level I just try to do these things and explain them to others. People do not know how the world around them operates. I also have started gardens in my local park, a ten acre park. I think the most profound change comes through educating children in school as part of the curriculum. Then it can penetrate the family.

Mary ~ You are to commended regarding your active participation in your community.
I hope that you are getting people to join you in your work.

BTW Mary to the Iris Forum.

Great points one and all! Helping to reduce climate change begins with us. I admit I could be doing more to help the environment, I try to do a little bit better every day.

God bless the children of Europe who are striking to demand their governments do more to reverse the process!
https://www.theguardian.com/en...

evelyninthegarden said:Mary ~ You are to commended regarding your active participation in your community.
I hope that you are getting people to join you in your work.

BTW Mary to the Iris Forum.

Welcome Mary to this forum! Your environmental and educational efforts are commendable!!

I'm so disgusted with the plastic mess in the oceans, tonight I ordered biodegradable compostable non-plastic bags! I don't live near stores that sell these so I ordered them from Amazon - even though I'm not feeling so friendly toward that company this week (no taxes on what, 11billion$$ in sales! ???) But until I find a better source, Amazon was my rushed choice. They have lots of different ones. I didn't want ones that degrade in 5 to 7 days, we use them mainly for used cat litter -so 20 weeks degradable was the choice - some are made from corn, some from sugar cane, etc.. (Our sugar cane toilet paper comes from Brandless). In the past, we used plastic bags from the grocery from when we bought vegetables. We re-used them when we cleaned the cat box - which is every day, but I just kept seeing underwater shots of floating plastic bags - that to turtles look like edible jellyfish! No more!
Now I won't feel guilty and neither will my two cats!

I know it's not popular these days to hold my view so you don't have to like it but at least I am going to share it because it brings is another perspective and that's prayer. Man already made the mess, maybe somewhat innocently. If you believe then ask the creator to reverse the damage and heal us of adding to the damage.
He put so much beautiful, down to the minute, detail into our world and I think just appreciating it and saying Sorry, please help us fix it, goes along way...He does love us and care about even our mistakes, just like any loving parent would!!! With that said, we can all keep working to be better stewards of this incredible planet. So the conversation about what we can each do, is still very needed.

We don't have litter boxes. The cats do their business outside. They each have warm beds on the front and back porches. They also spend some "lap time " inside. I put their beds in boxes since the weather has been so cold. They have grown winter coats.

We have so many active predators, Evelyn, that the cats are kept in when the sun goes down.We're so close to the creek where the deer, the lion, the coyote, et al gather to drink...and hunt. The litter boxes are for my cats' nighttime use, mainly. There's plenty of other things for me to feel guilty about regarding cats - like bird-love, tuna etc,

GreenIris said:I know it's not popular these days to hold my view so you don't have to like it but at least I am going to share it because it brings is another perspective and that's prayer. Man already made the mess, maybe somewhat innocently. If you believe then ask the creator to reverse the damage and heal us of adding to the damage.
He put so much beautiful, down to the minute, detail into our world and I think just appreciating it and saying Sorry, please help us fix it, goes along way...He does love us and care about even our mistakes, just like any loving parent would!!! With that said, we can all keep working to be better stewards of this incredible planet. So the conversation about what we can each do, is still very needed.

amen.

janwax said:We have so many active predators, Evelyn, that the cats are kept in when the sun goes down.We're so close to the creek where the deer, the lion, the coyote, et al gather to drink...and hunt. The litter boxes are for my cats' nighttime use, mainly. There's plenty of other things for me to feel guilty about regarding cats - like bird-love, tuna etc,

I do not feel guilty regarding the two cats that wandered onto this property. The other alternative was to bring them to the animal shelter, and who knows what would have happened to them? We did not seek them out or "adopt" them. But in the end, we actually did...adopt them, that is...

We just feed and care for them, and they in turn, give us amusement and love.

@janwax I suddenly lost my appetite for Tuna, & that even goes for Fancy Albacore. It is recommended that pregnant women eat less tuna, as it is contaminated with Mercury. Because Tuna are higher up in the food chain, in the Oceans ecosystem...It accumulates, at greater levels, as all the smaller fish, that were consumed by the bigger fish, on up to the very top of the
"food chain " & that means, eventually consumed by the Tuna fish, which continues to accumulate in them, as they grow even larger !
Some of that Mercury, was / is used for processing gold, near steams, which lead to the Oceans....
I won't bother going into it, about those "imported" ,energy saving light bulbs sold these days & where they're from. But suffice to say there are some alternative, LED lights that are really great now days, as a better alternative. I thought they were actually Halogen lights, after they first got turned on !

I'll have a look at new led lights, Shawn. Thanks!

Yes, I have some too. A little pricey, but long-lasting and bright light.

This article came up in my news feed this morning and I thought of this thread:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/20...

It's the second such initiative to clean up oceans (albeit on a much smaller scale) that I've read about recently (the first being an idea to deal with large plastic "islands", such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch).

grannysgarden said: ...Use a ground cover where you can to discourage unwanted growth...

I've heard Iris cristata makes a good ground cover! I'm going to order some this year!

Oh the LED lights are wonderful! They are much cheaper now than when they first came out with them too and they keep improving them all the time. I have been changing all our lighting over to the LED's. As an incandescent burns out, I replace it with an LED. This helps keep you from having to lay out a bundle of cash all at one time to replace all your bulbs.

One warning on the LED's & dimmer switches. If you have a dimmer then you want to make sure you have LED's that do not hum when dimmed. I have found Phillips dimmables do not make any humming noise. Not pushing Phillips - I don't have any investments in that company (or any company drat it all!) I am just sharing what I have learned on the subject.

Also you get so much more light with the LED's. You don't need the equivalent of a 60 watt to get the same amount of light --- a 40 watt will be more than sufficient.