We are building mountainsBy: Georgiana

Hawaii is a place generally associated to paradise, a beautiful and relaxing one, with crystal blue water and orchids garlands hanging around tourists’ necks.

However, the “heaven” called Hawaii really exists, it’s an archipelago situated in the Pacific Ocean, a group of small islands formed in millions of years by volcanic eruptions. But if you would sail away from Hawaii towards San Francisco, you’d come to another archipelago, to a mountains chain build in only 20 years by us… mountains of trash.

The Island of Garbage swirling in the Pacific Ocean is known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, North Pacific Gyre, Trash Vortex or Plastic Graveyard. This mass of plastic waste and debris is estimated by scientists to be anywhere from twice the size of Texas to twice the size of the continental U.S. This floating island of garbage is 80% plastic and weighs about 3.5 million tons. Moreover, a similar patch of floating plastic debris is found in the Atlantic Ocean.

Whether you already knew that, I cannot know it, but I did not until a few days ago… and now I am trying to see the half full again and I just can’t do it…

According to Captain’s Charles Moore researches “In the central North Pacific Gyre, pieces of plastic outweigh surface zooplankton by a factor of six to one”, “Ninety percent of Laysan albatross chick carcasses and regurgitated stomach contents

contain plastics. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food. Plastic debris releases chemical additives and plasticizers into the ocean. Plastic also adsorbs hydrophobic pollutants like PCBs and pesticides like DDT. These pollutants bio accumulate in the tissues of marine organisms, biomagnify up the food chain, and find their way into the foods we eat.”

Typically, in consulting projects’ credentials, we have the client’s problem and Accenture’s approach to address it. This time it’s not the client’s problem, it’s our problem, we cannot even say, like Al Gore ”it’s for our children”, no. Since the average age in Accenture Romania is somewhere around 25, this problem concerns me and you and its effects will be felt by each of us.. It’s just a matter of years… But it can also be just a matter of will, and here comes the Accenture approach.

It is not hard to separate the plastic from the non recycling waste, just leave it next to the waste bin and when you gathered a bunch of empty plastic recipients just take them with you and drop them at the dedicated bin next to your block. It is so simple, and yet, so important, can we do that? We could and did build mountains of trash, can we stop doing that? Basically, every piece of trash that each of us throws away and not into the recycling bins, increases the garbage mountains…

STOP that and START RECYCLING!

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