Adidas Creates Sneakers That Are Made Entirely from Ocean Trash

With Earth’s oceans being overloaded with plastic trash, engineers all over the world are making efforts to find innovative ways to remove this harmful debris from the marine environment. Thus, Boyan Slat of The Ocean Cleanup promises to launch a massive ocean cleaning system in 2016.

But what if there was also a way to give this plastic a new life and use it for further production? German footwear giant Adidas has proposed a non-trivial idea on what to do with ocean waste – to make shoes out of it, of course!

The company has created a prototype of sustainable sneakers made almost entirely from ocean trash. In particular, the upper shoe is made out of illegal gill nets and other plastic debris removed from the ocean while the shoe base incorporates sustainable materials.

Collecting plastic from the ocean to knit the sneakers was not an easy task. In fact, it was done with the collaboration of the nonprofit organization Sea Shepherd, which organized a 110-day expedition to track illegal fishing boats in West African waters. The green part of the Adidas shoes is nothing but fishing nets collected in the course of this expedition.

At the same time, Adidas plans to release a line of sustainable sneakers later this year, believing that there will be no problem with finding plastic waste, such as fishing nets and beach trash, to be used in the production.

The company claims that this initiative is aimed not only to recycle ocean trash but also to help reduce and avoid the production of plastic waste. Thus, Parley for the Oceans, a new nonprofit organization founded with the support of Adidas, is developing innovative technologies to alter the structure of plastic and make it less harmful to the environment, as well as to minimize the use of plastic in production in general.

“We’re going to end ocean plastic pollution only if we’re going to reinvent the material,” said Cyrill Gutsch, Parley for the Oceans founder. “Plastic doesn’t belong in nature, it doesn’t belong in the belly of a fish, it doesn’t belong out there. The ultimate solution is to cut into this ongoing stream of material that never dies, is to reinvent plastic.”

The company seeks to develop a material that would decompose safely in the environment, unlike the conventional plastic that is estimated to take more than 500 years to break down.

Adidas hopes that the use of this innovative material could eventually go beyond the production of footwear. “We don’t have to limit ourselves,” said Eric Liedtke of the Adidas Group. “We can put this in T-shirts, we can put this in shorts, we can put this in all kinds of stuff.”

What do you think?

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As Scientists Call For Action, California Leads The Way In Banning Microbeads

The state draws up the toughest legislation yet to outlaw microbeads as marine scientists ask for an outright ban across the USA

This month, a group of scientists called for an outright ban on microbeads, arguing that we don’t have time to delay extreme measures until there is more proof for their negative impact on the environment. They did so as California became the latest state to ‘ban the bead’.

The destructive nature of microbeads is clear to anyone with common sense: these tiny pieces of plastic are commonly added to creams, scrubs, toothpastes and gels as a cheap and effective exfoliator. Ranging in size from 0.0004 to 1.24 millimeters, they are too small to be filtered out by water treatment plants. In the USA alone, over 800 trillion microbeads are washed down the drains daily. Another 8 trillion make their way into the water system from sewage treatment plants- that’s enough of these miniscule beads to cover more than 300 tennis courts, every single day. Microbeads end up in our oceans, rivers and lakes, and because they are often confused for fish eggs or other food sources, they are rapidly killing off fish, mammals and seabirds all over the world.

In a paper entitled ‘Scientific evidence supports a ban on microbeads‘, eight experts have called on the government to outlaw them, arguing that we already have proof of how the tiny pieces of plastic are devastating marine eco-systems and that time is running out: we don’t have the means to clean them up, therefore the only solution is to stop manufacturers from using them in the first place.

The state of California agrees, and earlier this month passed a bill which will prohibit “selling or offering for promotional purposes in this state a personal care product containing plastic microbeads that are used to exfoliate or cleanse in a rinse-off product.” The bad news is that the legislation doesn’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2020.

Similar microbead bans are already in place in Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, Colorado, Indiana and Maryland, but some critics say that legislation (which only applies to personal care products) hasn’t gone far enough. Recent endorsement of a ban from leading marine scientists could mean a turning point in the fight against plastic pollution. Because manufacturers are not not going to create a unique product for California and Illinois, it stands to reason that banning microbeads in just a couple of states might force corporations to stop using them across the board. Here’s hoping…

You can take action by signing a petition here, sharing this article, and (last but not least) by boycotting any product that lists polyethylene and polypropylene in the ingredients.

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Japanese government scheduled to start dumping radioactive water into the ocean

Japan seems to be running out of storage space for decontaminated, but still radioactive water. It has been granted authority to dump it into the ocean.

No one has ever dumped radioactive water into the ocean after decontamination.  The vaguely "decontaminated" water is planned to be released into the ocean beginning in September, 2015.

The green light was given by Fukushima fishing cooperative and overturns their original decision of "no."  Things are drastic.  Scientists are frantically searching for a way to enter the reactor.  Reactor 1 core has, most likely, completely melted within its containment vessel.
 
The first drone that was sent in shut down after three hours of intense radiation; it was expected to last 10 hours.  The drone measured temperature as high as 26 Sieverts per hour, or Sv/h.  It was 26x greater than the level of 1 Sv/h they had predicted.  It is far more than toxic doses received by Loius Slotten and Harry K. Dollinger, both scientists killed by acute radiation accidents at Los Alamos in the 1940's.

 
Here is some of the drone's footage, including real-time statistics.

 

Radiation consist of a neutron bombardment that can disrupt or destroy DNA, causing other molecules to become isotopes which are, themselves, radioactive.  This chain reaction can cause cells to stop reproducing.
 
The Japanese government has not made readily available their methodology of water decontamination and has no idea if it's safe to dump the water.  The world needs to focus on on Fukushima right now, because there is a solution and we can figure it out.


http://fukushima-diary.com/2015/08/fukushima-fishing-cooperative-allowed-tepco-to-discharge-the-contaminated-groundwater-to-the-sea/
 
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201507280063

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