Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Three Environmental Catastrophes You’ve Never Heard Of

by Jeff Hughes

When Rachel Carson released Silent Spring in 1962, which attempted to raise awareness of the dangers of DDT, she touted a world without birds (DDT had been found to cause thinner egg shells and result in reproductive problems and death), a world where chemical industries were misinforming the public about the effects of their products on the public and the public’s environment. The book had an unprecedented effect on the public; it ultimately facilitated the ban of DDT in 1972, and is now widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.

This was an inspiring story, indeed, but as consumerism and industrialization raced forward without stopping check their blind spots, environmental issues on the scale of DDT seemed to arrive with ever-increasing frequency. Fast forward to modern day and we find ourselves in so much trouble, so often, that it’s difficult for the average citizen to keep up with all of it- so, in an attempt to keep you somewhat above the murk, here’s a list of three “elephants in the living room”, if you will, that you may never have heard of:

1) The Pacific Coast Garbage Patch

This is a patch of floating garbage that stretches from the coast of California all the way to Japan. Conservative estimates place the patch around the size of Texas, while other reports state that it’s the size of a small continent. In some places, the floating debris—estimated to be about 90 percent plastic—goes 90 feet deep. According to the Huffington Post, “…in many areas there are six times more pieces of plastic than plankton, the main food source for many sea animals. Where did this trash come from? Marine biologists estimate that about 80 percent of the litter is from land, either dumped directly into waterways or blown into rivers and streams from states as far away as Iowa.”

2) The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone

Aptly named, this is a 22,126 square kilometre (8,543 mi) region at the drainage basin of the Mississippi where agricultural and domestic storm water runoff have polluted the water to the point where only jellyfish can live. That’s 8,500 square miles of no marine biology other than jellyfish. These dead zones began as we over-fertilize our soils with nitrogen and other nutrients. As runoff carries these nutrients to the concentrated drainage basin, massive algal blooms occur as the fertilizers reach the ocean; the algal blooms are so massive that they deprive the area of oxygen for any other marine life. There are 146 known dead zones over the globe.

3) E-Waste

E-Waste, or electronic waste, is currently the fastest-growing form of waste on the planet according to Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council. To give you a small idea of the massive scale of this problem: 426,000 cell phones are retired in the US every day. This waste cannot simply be “thrown away” as it contains a number of harmful pollutants like lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chlorides; many of which are known to cause blindness, infertility, and cancer, among other ills. Many of the recycling companies equipped to safely dismantle this waste are greatly overburdened- to the point where many have been tempted to illegally sell this waste elsewhere. In a report conducted by “60 Minutes”, E-Waste was found to be illegally shipped (by US recycling companies) to parts of China where those in poverty break down our trash, oftentimes with medieval burning techniques, to extract copper, gold, or other valuable metals, meanwhile exposing themselves to all the aforementioned toxins. It was found that in Guiyu, China- a common destination of illegal E-waste trade- seven out of ten children have too much lead in their blood. 

There’s no end in sight for these issues and many more like them, as point-source pollution is a relatively new concept in the political sphere, and onlookers often rub them off as inescapable by-products of industrial development. As the middle class skyrockets in developing nations like China and India, there is no better time than now to raise the accountability of the global citizen. We need to keep in mind that as population nears the 7 billion mark and our planet becomes ever more crowded, there is no “away” to throw things to. Regardless of the overwhelming scale of these issues, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rebuy” has never been more relevant nor more necessary. All solutions start locally.