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Your plastic whatever doing untold damage

Who can't be appalled and horrified when reading this latest news - "Plastic Particles Circulating Endlessly in World's Oceans" on CommonDreams - about what we are doing to our environment and the creatures on it. We seem hell-bent to do untold unthinking damage - and then it will be too late to retrieve an intolerable situation.

"That plastic bottle or plastic take-away coffee lid that has 20 minutes of use can spend decades killing countless seabirds, marine animals and fish, experts reported here this week.

On remote Pacific island atolls, diligent albatross parents unknowingly fill their chicks' bellies with bits of plastic that resemble food. The chicks die of malnutrition, and when their bodies decay all those plastic bottle tops, disposable lighters, and the ubiquitous bits of plastic detritus get back into the environment in a cruel perversion of 'recycling'.

There is now so much plastic in the oceans it is likely that virtually every seabird has plastic in its belly if its feeding habits mean it mistakes plastic bits for food. The same is true for sea turtles, marine animals or fish, experts say."

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