Share and Voice: Earth Day on Oprah

Ya Ya...I watch Oprah too! I actually tivo every episode so when I was watching the episode last week on earth day, I could go back and catch actual facts that they were giving out. Here are some of the interesting things I learned:

Garbage Ring:As we have talked about in class before, there is a garbage ring from the coast of California to Japan. Here are some key facts I learned:

• Garbage patch is twice the size of Texas
• 90 ft
  
• largest one out of many garbage patches
• Considered an ecological disaster
• 3.5 million tons of plastic
• 80% liter from land, blown by wind, rivers and streams
• Dead albatross, which are a type of bird, are being found with stomachs full of plastic and garbage(including cigarettes)
• killing many types of animals
• Starting to see first cases of breast cancer in killer whales
  

What opened my eyes about this issue is that everything we are putting in our garbage is coming back to haunt us by being put back into the foods we eat. How scary is that???

Plastic Bags: Another Interesting topic was on plastic bags and how they are a major threat to our environment.

• 1% of bags are recycled
• San Francisco was the first U.S city to ban plastic bags in grocery stores in 2007
• Ireland now charges .33 cents per bag

For more stories and information about the earth day episode, check out Oprah.com!