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ocean pollution in hawaii statistics - Google Search

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Information about plastic for students aged K-6

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Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii's Ocean Plastics Program has recycled over 200,000 lbs of ocean plastic since 2011. Our work has expanded across the state and we now manage a network of partner organizations and individuals that collect ocean plastics off of Hawaii's coastlines. We utilize this ocean plastic to raise awareness about the issue of plastic pollution through recycling, marketing, and branding. Companies like Method Home, Adidas, and Corona have utilized our recycled ocean plastic to create valuable products meant to last while inspiring better consumer and producer behaviors.

Our Ocean Plastic Program started in 2011 with then partners Method Home, who made the first soap bottle out of Ocean Plastic and opened up a world of possibilities for innovation and inspiration. This partnership grew into the current relationship we now have with Parley for the Oceans.

All of our Ocean Plastic goes to our Partners at Parley for the Ocean instead of the landfill or incinerator. If you are interested in getting ocean plastic you can go to a beach and pick some up, or reach out to Parley for the Oceans. If you are doing cleanups in Hawaii and want to divert the Ocean Plastic you are collecting from the landfill or incinerator, click below.

There is enough plastic already in the world for us to not need to be making more. Let's turn the plastic washing ashore into a valuable resource to encourage removal vs. just walking over it.

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Ocean Plastics - Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii

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Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii's Ocean Plastics Program has recycled over 200,000 lbs of ocean plastic since 2011. Our work has expanded across the state and we now manage a network of partner organizations and individuals that collect ocean plastics off of Hawaii's coastlines.

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Vast amounts of trash have been washing ashore on the state's once-pristine beaches.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been trying to keep critical parts of the ocean clear of marine debris, removing 57 tons of it from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2014. This area is a part of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the largest conservation site in the United States.

Despite the government agency's efforts, Hawaii continues to be plagued by trash, much of it plastic.

Originally, there was speculation that Japan's devastating 2011 tsunami had brought a wave of debris to Hawaii's islands, but recent results from an aerial survey suggest otherwise.

Plastic debris makes up nearly half of the archipelago's shoreline trash, according to a survey (PDF) that was conducted between August through November 2015 by Hawaii's Department of Land & Natural Resources (DLNR) and North Pacific Marine Science Organization.

This survey was conducted so that these groups could see how big of an impact the Japanese storm had on Hawaii. It turns out the catastrophic storm wasn't the trash culprit.

"This survey found a very limited amount of debris associated with the Japan tsunami," Suzanne Case, DLNR chairwoman, said in a statement.

So where is all this garbage coming from?

"Most of what was mapped is common, everyday items that someone haphazardly tossed onto the ground or directly into the water," Case said.

In short - it's coming from just about anywhere and everywhere.

With the way the state is positioned geographically, the ocean's current is carrying massive amounts of plastic waste to Hawaii's coast.

"These items get caught up in ocean currents and unfortunately much of it eventually lands, mostly on north and east facing shores. Hawaii is recognized around the world for our beautiful beaches. Unfortunately we cannot say they are pristine, because they've been so seriously impacted by our trash," Case added.

Threatening our environment

The increased plastic waste on Hawaii's shoreline is a big deal because it's affecting the state's wildlife. There's evidence that marine life and seabirds have been ingesting bits of plastic, which is detrimental to their health.

It's not just small pieces of plastic washing ashore. Some of this marine debris includes big items like derelict fishing gear, foam, tires, even abandoned vessels.

The survey, which was funded by the Ministry of Environment of Japan, concluded that this trash is threatening many critical habitats in and around Hawaii, such as coral reefs that harbor some unique species, like the world's biggest sponge, which was recently discovered by scientists of the state's coast.

The increased waste in Earth's oceans has been a growing problem. A great deal of plastic debris finds itself in massive garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean.

Picking up the trash

Marine debris is the huge threat to wildlife and possibly to human health. Scientists still don't know what happens to our bodies when we eat fish that have ingested microplastics - plastic that break up into tiny particles that are mistakenly eaten by marine life.

Microplastic has become such a problem for U.S. waterways, with more than 8 trillion microbeads flooding into our streams, rivers and lakes - that's enough to cover 300 tennis courts daily - that President Barack Obama signed a bipartisan bill in December prohibiting the sales and distribution of products containing microbeads.

Although the marine debris plaguing Hawaii is the most widespread type of trash in our oceans, it is also some of the most preventable waste, according to NOAA.

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hawaii has a serious trash problem - cnn

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Vast amounts of trash have been washing ashore on the state's once-pristine beaches. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been trying to keep critical parts of the ocean clear of marine debris, removing 57 tons of it from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in 2014.

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Plastic Free Hawaiʻi : Kokua Hawaii Foundation

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The Kōkua Hawaiʻi Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that supports environmental education in the schools and communities of Hawaiʻi.

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The Dirtiest Place is on Big Island: Kamilo Point

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The Dirtiest Place is on Big Island: Kamilo Point

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HONOLULU ― Remote, undeveloped coastlines on the Hawaiian islands are renowned for their natural beauty. But Kamilo Point, a far-flung beach in the rural Ka'u district of the Big Island, is not.

On the island's southeastern side, Kamilo Point looks like a wasteland, despite its tide pools and pockets of lava rock. The ocean's currents and powerful trade winds deposit thousands of pounds of man-made trash on this beach each year.

One look, and it's no wonder how this became known as one of the dirtiest beaches in the world. Some call it Plastic Beach.

People have found hair brushes, cigarette lighters, shards of plastic, water bottles, fishing net, straws, broken detergent bottles and discarded trash with labels in various languages, including Japanese and Russian.

It's a graveyard for the world's junk and a stark reminder that plastic can never really be thrown away.

In just a few months, the Hawaii Wildlife Fund (HWF) collected and hauled away 15,000 pounds of trash, nylon nets and fishing line from Kamilo Beach. The beach was visibly cleaner afterward, as it is usually after HWF's regular cleanups, but it was unclear how long it would stay like that.

So where is all this trash coming from?

The Big Island's southeastern shore is relatively close to the eastern Pacific garbage patch, which is part of the massive convergence of marine litter known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The easternmost concentration of trash is midway between the California coast and the eastern shores of Hawaii.

These so-called patches of trash are a result of oceanic and atmospheric pressures that push free-floating items in the ocean ― sea life, pollution, tiny pieces of plastic ― into one general area. However, it does not converge into a floating island of trash, like some people have come to believe.

Instead, it's more like a cloud of pollution, and much of it is made up of particles called microplastics, or tiny chunks of plastic smaller than a quarter inch, according to Carey Morishige, formerly of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program. Some of these plastic pieces are microbeads from face wash products, or plastic fibers from clothing made out of synthetic materials; but others were shed from large items that the ocean battered and broke up over time.

Debris from the trash patch in the Pacific often gets deposited across the Hawaiian archipelago.

But the Big Island sees the worst of it.

As the most easterly Hawaiian island, the Big Island's Kamilo Point and the larger Ka'u coast have always acted as the perfect colander for items drifting across the ocean.

"Kamilo itself means 'whirling, swirling, twisting currents," Lamson told HuffPost, referencing the area's consistent onshore winds.

Local organizations, including HWF, have cleaned these coastal trash magnets for decades. But, like clockwork, mounds of trash find their way to the shore.

"The Hawaiian archipelago acts like a sieve, collecting debris that was floating around the Pacific Ocean and accumulating it along our shores," Megan Lamson, a survey diver for the state's Division of Aquatic Resources, told The Huffington Post.

Lamson has participated in HWF's Kamilo Beach cleanups for years.

Native Hawaiians once used the beach to collect large driftwood, which traveled to Kamilo from the American Pacific Northwest, to make dugout canoes. Today, old toothbrushes, shards of plastic and mounds of rope and fishing line pile up on the shore instead.

Trash has accumulated on Kamilo's beaches as early as the mid 1980s, as seen in the photo below, which was taken between 1984 and 1987 by HWF volunteer and Big Island resident Noni Sanford.

Before plastics were prominent on the Ka'u coast, Sanford would collect driftwood at Kamilo Beach for her father's artwork. In 2006, she'd collect washed-up trash to create artwork of her own.

"If you were to dig up the sand through the rocks and sift through it with your hands, you'll find more plastic than sand," Alison Teal, a local sustainability activist, told HuffPost. "It's so sad to see it covered in everything you can imagine."

In December 2016, Plastic Change International, a Denmark-based plastic pollution advocacy group, visited Kamilo to demonstrate how dire the area's pollution problem is. The video they created below sheds light on how easy it is to find microplastics in the ocean, especially on the shores of Kamilo.

It's not clear if beach cleanups are enough to keep Kamilo Beach free from the trash that winds up on its shores, but organizations are trying to be innovative with the debris.

Last week, the Hawaii Wildlife Fund sent discarded nylon fishing nets found at Kamilo to the island of Oahu to be converted into energy as part of NOAA's Net-to-Energy program. The nets will be cut into smaller pieces and burned as fuel at a power plant in Kapolei, according to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

Lamson, who volunteers part time as HWF's Big Island director, thinks that Kamilo's pollution problem can be handled only at a global level.

"The solution is not to encourage more people to come to Kamilo to clean up," she told HuffPost. "The solution will come with [humans] reducing our dependence to plastics, especially single-use items that we can do without."

And with an estimated 8 million metric tons of discarded plastics turning up in the ocean every year, Lamson says, humans are the only ones who can stop it from pouring into the sea.

"Ultimately, marine debris and plastic pollution are both people problems," she said. "It was created by people and can be solved by people."

ALSO ON HUFFPOST

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The Islands Of Hawaii Hold One Of The Dirtiest Places In The World

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HONOLULU ― Remote, undeveloped coastlines on the Hawaiian islands are renowned for their natural beauty. But Kamilo Point, a far-flung beach in the rural Ka'u district of the Big Island, is not. On the island's southeastern side, Kamilo Point looks like a wasteland, despite its tide pools and pockets of lava rock.

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com