Two questions that have troubled me and my fiance of late:
First, what is the plastic six pack holder thing called?
Second: I’ve heard that in order to protect the environment you are supposed to cut each of the plastic rings, in order for them not to cause any marine life undue problems.
I can understand this.
What I can’t understand is how does my plastic six pack holder thing-a-ma-bob get from out of my trashbag, out of the dump, and into the ocean?
Anyone have any ideas?
I think you’re supposed to cut them to keep birds from getting caught up in them when they try to use them as nesting material.
Cutting them up: more feel good action than practical action.
Somewhere someone found a plastic ring wrapped around some wildlife somewhere, but is it most likely because of a direct litterer.
I’ll try to show that the ‘wildlife gets caught in the plastic six pack holder’ claim is mostly unsubstantiated.
IF the rings get in the ocean, they could be a hazard to wildlife. But it seems unlikely to me that much of your household garbage is routed directly to the ocean.
So my advice is: if you throw a ring overboard from a boat, be sure to cut it up first. (Be a responsible polluter.) Otherwise, never mind. Have a beer.
They can (according to a conservationist friend of mine) get stuck on the beaks of gulls (not the large holes that hold the cans, the smaller square ones between them.
Gulls are a common sight at landfills, I suppose in the general melee to consume food scraps, it’s not impossible that the occasional gull would find itself so entangled, but I can’t imagine that six-pack holders are the only culprit and anyway, the gull population in such cases is often abnormally high due to the abundant food resources.
The whole “responsible polluter” thing had me rolling!