WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGES IN THE FOLLOWING LINKS - DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU!
Turtle caught in a ring when young, with growth abnormalities as a result.
A different gull with his beak trapped shut.
Not a UL.
Maybe if a swallow tried to use it for carrying a coconut?
It is not an urban legend, as Cecil noted.
However, if you are going to worry about six-pack rings, why not worry about everything ELSE that can escape from your garbage and end up causing wildlife headaches? How many of you toss items into the garbage that have toxic substances in them? How many make sure that all your plastic grocery bags, etc, are recycled instead of wadded up and tossed into the can? How many of you make certain to avoid tossing sharp-edged cans away? Etc., etc., etc.
How you deal with it depends upon your viewpoint, and I would not discourage anyone who feels as Guinastasia does. However, I have never been impressed by people who will feel bad about one obvious manifestation of a problem, but ignore the multiple other less obvious ones; they aren’t really taking the lesson to heart.
But as Earl learned this week, doing 5 minutes worth of work on your part of the world is better than doing nothing because you can’t fix it all. There’s always going to be something you’re not doing well enough, we can never make our ecological impact zero. That’s why we now talk of *reducing *our ecological footprint. Make whatever small differences you will make, and it’s better than nothing. And maybe once cutting her six pack rings into bits is second nature and no longer feels like a chore, **Guin **will consider reusing yogurt containers for storage instead of buying Rubbermaid. Or starting a countertop compost bucket. Or putting in florescent bulbs instead of incandescent. Or installing solar panels on her roof. Or using graywater to water her garden. Or raising her own goats for milk and organic fertilizer.
I don’t care how ecologically sensitive you think you are - there’s always something more than can be done. But don’t let that stop you from doing something.
(Not picking on you, **Guin **dear, just a name for an example.)
Any cans I have are recycled, and we reuse ALL of our plastic grocery bags-in fact, we use them as trash bags. As for toxic substances, which ones are the ones we should be concerned about.
And I DO reuse yogurt containers-and all the others for storage. Why bother buying rubber maid-these are much more convenient, and cheaper in the long run.
That poor, poor turtle broke my heart-is it possible to find out anything else on her?
I do not by soda or beer that comes in plastic rings, and when someone brings them, I do cut them up.
I also recycle plastic shopping bags and use cloth bags most of the time.
I recycle all batteries, even little button batteries from stupid musical cards.
I recycle my compact fluorescent bulbs. I have only had one burn out so far. This was after five years of heavy use.
I use digital cameras instead of film cameras. No more toxic chemicals in development.
We do laundry in cold water. The clothes get clean, amazing. 
We have thought about and then installed Solar Panels to provide much of our electric requirements.
We use a lot of compact fluorescent bulbs in place of incandescent.
We have a programmable thermostat for heat and installed a very high efficiency burner for the boiler for our baseboard heat.
I mulch and slow compost all of our grass and leaf clippings.
We replaced our leaky 40-year-old windows with new double pane, high R-value windows over a three-year period.
**I actively participate in a local environmental group and I strongly encourage everyone else to get involved. **
I am a member of several national/global environmental groups. My money helps to push for green legislation.
We recycle our plastic glass bottles and our cans.
I reuse as much stuff as possible or find ways to donate it.
I do monthly recycling center runs to properly dispose of old computer equipment from work. (We remove the hard drives and handle these separately).
We also wipe most PC and reload them with just Win98 and find homes for these and old monitors.
We do not recycle our junk mail and old papers. We have nowhere to take it. I find this very disappointing. When we lived in Howell, we could recycle our junk mail and did. I do recycle our old phone books.
We do not compost our kitty litter anymore. We use scoopable instead, which greatly reduced the volume and should therefore save in transport costs instead.
I need to buy a Hot Water Heater tank blanket to increase its efficiency by about 10-15%.
We do not compost our waste produce and we really should, we had problems with collecting it and it getting moldy.
My next car is very likely to be a hybrid; I am hoping Toyota will sell a Camry Wagon Hybrid. Maybe someone else will step up and make a small Hybrid wagon. Otherwise I will find the best Hybrid Sedan that I can.
There is so much that we all can do and much of it would save us money or cost very little extra effort. If we all did a little more, we would make a big difference cumulatively.
Jim
I can’t find anything else about that turtle in particular.
However, you’ll be glad to know that at least one company, in response to the turtle problem in particular, has developed photodegradable rings. They also have recycling programs where schoolkids send them plastic six-pack ring holders and they…do something with them. I’m not sure what, but it does not include sticking them around turtles.
You can tell a ring is made by this company if it has a small embossed diamond on it. Now that I know, I won’t buy any other.
But I’ll still cut them up. They’ll still degrade in pieces.
Hi WhyNot,
I love your suggestions. We have even thought about the goats. My wife had goats as a child. They use to make a lot of chocolate pudding. She has told me it is the best. I do not think we will get goats, but we have looked into it and I offered to build the corral and goat shed, if my wife and daughter want to follow through on this. Same thing for a garden, I will till it, fence it and do all the prep work. I will not weed or tend it however. These things do not hold my interest.
I forgot to mention, when we bought a Hi-Def TV, I bought a very efficient Westinghouse 37” LCD instead of a Plasma or DLP as the energy consumption was much lower of the LCD and was actually lower than our 32” tube set.
Jim
Apparently you don’t live anywhere near the coast. There are so many seagulls and bald eagles circling the air over our local landfill, they damn near block out the sun. At times you can’t hear yourself think.
Just imagine the concentration of plastic and 6-pac rings in a landfill for a 30,000 people city.
What Exit?, I love your list as well. You illustrate so many things that can be done with a little attention and money.
I just don’t want people to think that because they can’t afford solar panels (or don’t own the building they live in) or a hybrid car or even $200 to replace all their light bulbs at once that they can’t make *some *impact. Every week, I buy one florescent bulb (at about $5). It will take me half a year or more to change them all out. But it’s what I can afford to do, and it’s a little positive step. Do I wish I could run away and go live in some earth-friendly geodesic underground yurt with a composting toilet and a huge garden watered with my shower run off? Yeah. But it ain’t gonna happen soon.
Similarly, I don’t want people getting so overwhelmed by everything they “should” be doing that they say “screw it!” and don’t do anything at all.
I don’t own my building, so I can’t buy a more efficient washing machine. But I did put an article on the wall in the laundry room about washing clothes with cold water, so hopefully some of my neighbors will make that choice.
I put an extra recycling bin in the basement, because while most of the tenants recycle their garbage in their apartments, the common area invites just throwing everything in the trash. One blue bin later, and people throw their cardboard in there instead. Ditto for yard parties - put out recycling containers, and people will use them. Don’t, and the bottles and cans end up in the trash.
I can’t afford any new car, much less a hybrid. But I guess you could say I “reuse” other people’s old cars!
We recycle cans, bottles, paper and cardboard, as well as plastics 1 and 2.
I use fabric bags at the grocery store some of the time. The rest, I ask for plastic and use them to line my wastebaskets and take out the cat litter (also scoopable).
We teach our kids to turn off the tap when soaping their hands or brushing their teeth. Is there a water shortage in Chicago? No. We have a big lake to our right. But it’s easier to install the habit now than learn it as an adult. Ditto recycling, reusing, etc.
We buy big cans of applesauce, fruit cocktail, and other kiddie snacks and put them in smaller containers for lunchboxes, instead of buying single serve packs. Lunchables make my head hurt.
We freecycle.
And, now that I think of it, all these things seem like no big deal anymore, even though when I started them many seemed like a pain in the ass. So it’s time for me to kick it up a notch and find something new that seems like a bit of a stretch.
Shoot. Wrong URL. That should be www.freecycle.org , of course.
Ya gotta cut up those plastic Halloween pumpkins…
So you’re saying that it’s okay for people who live inland to toss garbage every which way because it probably won’t get into the ocean?
The six pack rings can still get into rivers and lakes, and as other people have mentioned, they are also a hazard for some terrestrial animals.
No, I’m just curious how my properly-disposed-of six-pack-rings get birds into trouble. I don’t throw my garbage every-which-way.
My garbage is disposed of in a landfill within 5 miles of my house in Akron, Ohio. How does this get into a river or a lake?
Not trying to be a hard-ass here. I definitely would like to crucify anyone at a beach who went fishing, drinking, and tossed their trash.
My drive to school is along the same route to the local landfill - you would not believe the amount of trash that falls out of the back of those garbage trucks. Even if it doesn’t end up in water, it still has the potential to end up somewhere where an animal could get into it. Garbage bags burst, garbage falls off the trucks. It doesn’t need to be in/near water to do harm.
**Sam ** that is cool. 6-pack rings are not the #1 threat to wildlife and if you are far from a major water source, the problem is minimized.
I would suggest you find one thing suggested in this thread, that you do not do yet, and start doing it. Many of them are win-win acts where you end up saving money.
Go green, it feels good*. 
Jim *Warning might cause a high level of smugness that offends others.
I found out that said turtle is named “Peanut” and that she is now still alive and kickin’, two years after that video was made.
I may not live near an ocean, but I do live in the city of “Three Rivers”, and there are tons of creeks and streams and lakes around here.
One thing people should remember, if your yogurt comes in packs (mine does), and you don’t have access to trash recycling (I don’t), is to rinse out all plastic containers. Small critters put their heads into those things, going after the food residue - even if you scrape it out, the odor remains and attracts them. Very often, their heads get caught, and they starve to death. I soak out the yogurt cups, and rinse (and crush them as much as I can, if the opening is narrower than the body). Not a big deal, but as disabled/mostly housebound, there are limits on how much I can do.
I did go over to fluorescents 12 years ago, when the bulbs cost $14 & up (yeowch; $5 or so apiece nowadays amortizes against the electric bill in “no time”), and am holding onto burnt out ones until I can get them to safe disposal. I will not put them in trash (adding more mercury to the environment).