Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
According to the UN Environment Programme, 80% of the trash taken from Earth’s oceans consists of plastics such as shopping bags and drinking bottles. The report calls thin film plastic bags "pointless." In other words, we don't need them anymore: get rid of them with a worldwide ban!
Within the press release, Achim Stiner, who is the UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, stated: "Marine litter is symptomatic of a wider malaise: namely the wasteful use and persistent poor management of natural resources. The plastic bags, bottles and other debris piling up in the oceans and seas could be dramatically reduced by improved waste reduction, waste management and recycling initiatives."
He added, "Some of the litter, like thin film single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere-there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere. Other waste can be cut by boosting public awareness, and proposing an array of economic incentives and smart market mechanisms that tip the balance in favor of recycling, reducing or re-use rather than dumping into the sea.”
The researchers studying this problem for the UN state that some trash piles in the ocean are “roughly the size of Texas” and the waters in these areas are “thick like a plastic soup.” [CNN: “Ocean trash problem 'far from being solved,' U.N. says”]
Some of the solutions reported by the UN and publicized by CNN are:
• Countries and regions should adopt long-term plans to prevent litter from ending up in the oceans.
• Countries should monitor marine litter using international standards and methodologies.
• Ports should encourage fishing boats not to discard nets at sea.
• Efforts to reduce marine litter should get more funding.
Do you use plastic bags and plastic drinking containers? Some of them are probably floating in the ocean right now. Could you use recyclable cloth bags instead, or paper bags that would be returned to the stores each time you shop?
Isn't it very wasteful to throw away empty bottles of water each and every day? Couldn't you use a reusable container to drink water (especially when numerous scientific reports show that regular tap water is just as healthy for you as bottled water)?
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
