What would it be like to swim down through the estimated 100 million tons of trash swirling around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Mandy Barker’s photographs bring viewers probably as close as they’d ever want to come to finding out.
See the rest here: Swim Down Through a Sea of Trash With Dramatic, Eerily Beautiful Photos by Mandy Barker
A new project uses location-based data from a throwaway mobile phone to track the life cycle of New York’s garbage.
If you stacked all of the plastic bottles we pulled from the Schuylkill River this summer end to end, they would be 2.5 times the height of the Comcast Center, the tallest building in Philadelphia.
In case you have a fear of heights, that’s enough plastic bottles to wrap around City Hall 2.5 times.
Can someone please tell us where 2012 went?
Last Tuesday was our final Philadelphia cleanup for the season.
Our summer results are in and they’re a bit disturbing.
During 8 cleanups in 2012, 389 Philadelphia volunteers joined us in removing 4,513 pounds of trash from the Schuylkill River at Bartram’s Garden. We picked up an insane amount of recyclables: 3,771 plastic bottles, 163 glass bottles, and 281 aluminum cans.
Our weird trash collection included: a bunny candlestick that survived the summer without melting, an empty gun case, a parking ticket and monopoly money, a child’s ID from 1985, a car engine, and a bucket of kitchen knives.
We had a great 2012 season and would like to extend a thanks to all of our volunteers this summer. See you in March 2013!
Cleanup Spotlight: Finishing 2012 Strong
“From Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River to the coast off Myrtle Beach, S.C., volunteers convened at 28 separate cleanups to get their hands dirty and make a difference, removing more than 58,000 pounds of waste from rivers, streams and oceans throughout the U.S.” -Earth911.com
Photo via Katharine Friedgen, United By Blue
(Source: unitedbyblue.com)
United By Blue and Trail Creek Outfitters Removes 562 Pounds of Trash from The Brandywine Creek
United By Blue Removed 303 Pounds of Trash from the Schuylkill River
We honored America’s birthday a day early by helping Bartram’s Garden and the Schuylkill River declare independence from the waterway trash that acclimated along its shore.
We’ve started to see the same familiar faces at our Bartram’s Garden cleanups and we were joined by some newcomers on July 3rd from Haverford House Fellows and the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship employees at Haverford College, Drexel University students, and 20 Dialogue Institute participants.
Our weird trash included half of a chair, an arrow, volleyball, half of an Easter egg, the heel of a shoe and a little kid’s sneaker. Our interns were blown away at the amount of recyclables-197 plastic bottles, 18 glass bottles, and 41 cans- that accumulated along the Schuylkill River over the past month.
Our summer cleanup series will take place on the first Tuesday of the month (August 7th, September 4th, and October 2nd). Volunteers who attend three UBB Bartram’s Garden cleanups qualify for a free Bartram’s Garden membership.
(Source: unitedbyblue.com)
Olympic Competitions We’d Like to See
The 50 Yard Trash Dash
The Cleanup Car Packing and Unpacking Races
The Synchronized Recyclables Sort
The Bag Carrying Relay
The Permanent Plastic Water Bottle Toss
The Sit and Pose
(Source: unitedbyblue.com)
United By Blue + Outdoor Sports Center’s Five Mile River Cleanup
Check us out at www.unitedbyblue.com
When it comes to taking out the trash, our volunteers never let us down. Even though we only had 15 enthusiastic volunteers on Saturday, we removed over a ton of trash from along Five Mile River.
Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful’s Illegal Dumpsite Survey 2012
Read the full survey here.
Help make a difference, join United By Blue at a cleanup.