Dongrong, the ICCS Education Captain, is feeling relaxed because the speaker's line up for the Site Buddy Briefing next week is all finalised, everyone's ready and hyped up to give participants a motivational and informative session. Most importantly, she is going away to a tropical island for sun and surf while we hold the fort – yes, we will keep reminding her about this for years!

Posted via email from International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

Click for a link to the larger image.

A lovely poster that illustrates the threat of marine trash by Agència Catalana de l'Aigua and Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Medi Ambient | Habitatge. Via twitter: @aramc via @TEDchris.

This is apparently a 2005 “Campaign for the Government of Catalunya to keep the Mediterranean sea clean.” Link

Posted via email from International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

ICCS Otters brought posters supplemented by turtle conservation posters from Underwater World Singapore and some cute recyclable bags at the NUS Green Carnival 2007!

This year we picked up more than 14,000 bags on the shores!
“Plastic bags are killing us,” by Katharine Mieszkowski. Salon.com, 10 Aug 2007. The most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, the lowly plastic bag is an environmental scourge like none other, sapping the life out of our oceans and thwarting our attempts to recycle it.

“The plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They’re made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. One recent study found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they’ve been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It’s equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.”

Read the complete article at salon.com

In Singapore, see also:

• “Say no to plastic bags.” By Lee U-Wen. Today, 18 Apr 2007.
• “Plastic bags needed, but reduce dependence.” Letter by Liang Xinyi. The Straits Times Forum, 25 May 2007.