Introduction.

This is being posted here for reaction before going live on Blogger.

Introduction

In the last two years I have walked extensively through watersheds that are just miles from the Pacific Ocean. I pass miles of streets and streams that are often clogged with the waste of our consumer culture. It’s depressing. I now realize there is something I can do. I have started going around picking up plastic trash.

No. I have no intention of ever attempting to pick it all up myself. I am starting by studying it. I intend to use knowledge I have acquired over a career in the technical professions to propose some things that should help to stem the flow into the ocean.

There are some who have proposed machines to collect the waste from the open ocean. I wish them success, but there are big challenges to scaling it to the needed proportions. My proposals deal with the terminal stage of the pollution’s journey to the sea.

A little about my background. I have taught. I have done other things. I am retired from doing a variety of technical occupations, mostly in manufacturing, with a fairly lengthy detour into construction and land development. It is the latter that I will mine for details of what I am proposing.

Now for a confession. I am responsible for much of the problem. I am a Boomer. Over the course of my life I have worked in the production of everything from consumer products to military weapons. Personal transportation over my career has left behind a horrible carbon footprint.

The starting point of this presentation will have to do with another of my past sins. From 1977 to 1988 I was a smoker of cigarettes. Cigarette filters are a major source of plastic, cellulose acetate, flowing into the ocean. The relative uniformity of the size of the pieces makes them a good subject for studying the flow, and how to arrest it.