Garbage cleaned up
Indonesia is a country made up of 17,000 islands scattered between the Indian and Pacific oceans. With over 275 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most populous country and the biggest Muslim-majority country. Java, the world’s most populous island, is home to more than half of the country’s population. Being surrounded by lots of water Indonesia has lots of fishermen and boats. The island waters are full of beautiful exotic fish and sea animals and could be wonderful tourist destinations especially for scuba divers and snorkelers, but they have a problem. Too much garbage. Not the garbage we put in big cans and take to the land fill, but the kinds of litter we might find on the street or in a recycling bin. Sadly the garbage gets dropped or dumped on the beaches and in the streams and even in the ocean off ships. The situation has grown so bad that many of the beaches on the big islands are covered with litter and trash several layers thick. Since most of the people on these islands are making a subsistence living there is no government garbage collection and the sloppy situation has just gotten worse over the years.
The Indonesian fisheries ministry has launched a program to pay fishers to collect plastic trash from the sea. The initiative is part of wider efforts to reduce Indonesia’s marine plastic pollution by 70% by 2025. Sadly Indonesia is a top contributor to the plastic trash crisis in the ocean. The program that will pay thousands of traditional fishers to collect plastic trash from the sea. Each of the 1,721 participating fishers will receive the equivalent of $10 a week for collecting up to 9 lbs of plastic waste from the sea daily. This is about $1 dollar more than most of them make fishing and they can do the work with their own nets in familiar territory. Participants are located across all of Indonesia’s main islands. Marine plastic waste poses a threat to marine animals, who can become entangled in it or ingest it. This leads to suffocation, starvation, or drowning. Marine plastics have been blamed for the deaths of marine mammals. Indonesia plans to expand protection of its seas to cover an area nearly the size of Germany by 2030 — and then tripling that by 2045.
Garbage Humor
I ran after the garbage truck yelling, “Am I too late for the garbage?”
The driver stopped and said “No, jump right in!”
Designing bear-proof garbage cans is very hard…
There will always be a significant overlap between the smartest bears, and the dumbest people.
Last night I dreamt of a beautiful walk on a sandy beach.
At least that explains the footprints I found in the cat litter box this morning.
Housewife: “Would you mind escorting me to the garbage can, dear?” Why?”
“Because I want to be able to tell the neighbors that we go out together once in a while.”
October 12th Birthdays
1950 – Susan Anton, 1975 – Marion Jones, 1992 – Taylor Horn, 1977 Christie Kerr
1935 – Luciano Pavarotti, 1968 – Hugh Jackman, 1970 – Kirk Cameron, 1986 – Tyler Blackburn