TedX's Great Plastic Garbage Patch
Updated: 12/11/201: See the links of the video presentations.
Fellow Green Mom, Beth Terry, the editor of My Plastic Free Life (formerly known as Fake Plastic Fish,) is speaking at TEDx about the Great PacificGarbagePatch along with many other heavy environmental hitters. I urge you to join me for an event that I hope will change the way we live today and in the future: TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch.
It will be streamed LIVE from Green Talk. So tune in. (Note, you can no longer see the live event. See here for a list of the presenters and their respective presentations.)
This one-day event will bring together thought leaders from the fields of technology, science, arts and entertainment, design, activism, and business to discuss the global plastic pollution crisis. Together, the group will identify the problem and share possible ways to solve it. The conference will culminate with the launch of 4 challenges to humanity – be part of this event and help stop plastic pollution worldwide.
You can watch the event LIVE on www.TedxGreatPacificGarbagePatch.com or on Green Talk the day of the event. Beth, my anti-plastic hero, will be on at 1:30. Her live presentation is on YouTube now. See it below:
Who Will be Speaking?
Confirmed speakers include Dr. Sylvia Earle, Captain Charles Moore, Van Jones, David de Rothschild, Jackson Browne, Jordan Howard, Stacy Malkan, Ken Cook, Bharati Chaturvedi, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, Vice President of Ghana, Beth Terry, Fabien Cousteau, and Ed Begley Jr. More speakers are listed here. . View the agenda for the day’s events.
What is TEDx Great PacficGarbage Patch?
According to the press release about this event,
“TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch (http://www.tedxgreatpacificgarbagepatch.com) is a forum where issue experts, youth leaders, activists, visual and performing artists, actors, musicians, politicians and many others will share observations on how plastic pollution affects ocean/environmental health and public health; explore solutions for reducing our plastic footprint, and begin to develop ideas about eliminating plastic pollution through individual action as well as public- and private-sector innovation.
On Green Talk, my readers know that I abhor plastic consumption and think that plastic is too overwoven into the fabric of our lives. Sure, it is lightweight and convenient, but how much of it is recycled, how much natural resources are depleted to make it, and how much of it is just discarded in our waterways? Um, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch should give you a hint.
What is the Garbage Patch?
“In the past few years, the world has taken notice of the Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, a gyre of trash estimated to be at a minimum the size of the state of Texas and possibly as large as the United States. 90% of this trash patch is comprised of plastic. And there are similar areas of plastic pollution throughout the world – in all the world’s oceans, in seemingly unlikely places like the Arabian Desert, along some of the most pristine beaches of the world, in our cities, in our rivers, and in our bodies. Plastic pollution affects every one of us.” (emphasis added.)
After the live stream, I will be updating this post to include Beth’s talk since the now current embedded video will no longer be available. All talks will be uploaded to Youtube.
Help be part of the Plastic Solution. Watch the livestream Saturday, November 6, 2010.
Joe Huang says
It’s really amazing. This is the firs time that I learned about the Garbage Patch. I’ve never thought it will be as big as the size of the state of Texas. That really scares me. Plastic is a big problem right now. But it’s not easy to deal with it, we should have scientists helping us to cope with it. We also should encourage every one on the earth to take this problem seriously. Most importantly, we should invent a better product than plastic bags which green and low cost and easy to produce.
Make a quiz-E-learning Master
Steve S says
I recently was made aware of the Garbage Patch and was astounded that something like this exists. We are fortunate enough in our community to have a mixed recycling service bi-weekly so we have been trying to do our part but I never knew to take the caps and lids off of the containers before recycling until I attended a seminar unrelated to the topic and they were doing a plastic cap drive. Now we take the caps off and separate them to take to a facility that specializes in recycling plastic lids. I’m going to try to catch the event to see what else we should be doing to help.
Anna@Green Talk says
Steve S, that is so cool that your city has caps recycling! Let us know what else they are doing. BTW, I love your gravatar! (From a mom of four boys. *sign*) Anna