Social media users sell plastic bags after NSW single-use plastic bag ban | Daily

Land-based sources of pollution have a major impact on planetary health and on the oceans, evidenced by the development of a Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities (GPA). Growing populations, increasingly intensive and large-scale agriculture, and booming urbanization mean a growing amount of wastewater discharge into aquatic ecosystems and nutrient runoff to waterways. Together, these lead to eutrophication, toxic algae blooms, greater incidence of water-borne disease, lowered resilience of ecosystems to environmental change, and harm to species, including humans. Wastewater pollution and nutrient runoff are evident in freshwater and fluvial systems, but in this MOOC we also aim to focus on the impacts and solutions that pertain to coasts and oceans.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of Pennsylvanians agree state lawmakers should place a high priority on funding for state parks and forests, according to a recent state poll of likely voters.  The agreement was broad-based and bipartisan, including majorities of voters regardless of their party affiliation, age, gender, geography, or ethnicity.  “Pennsylvanians – no matter who they are, where they live, or what political views they hold – support investing in our state parks and forests and protecting our precious natural resources,” said Brad Mallory, Board Chair of the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation, which commissioned the scientific statewide poll.  In addition, the poll shows that 67 percent of Pennsylvania likely voters support using as much as $125 million of the state’s share of the federal American Rescue Plan’s funding on the maintenance and repair of state parks and forests. 

As a lifelong West Michigan resident and avid beach walker whose hometown draws its drinking water from Lake Michigan, Arthur Hirsch has always loved spending time along the Great Lakes.  That’s how he spotted something worrying in the water three summers ago.  Thousands of plastic pellets littered the beach’s sandy shore, just a small sampling of the 22 million pounds of plastic waste that enters the Great Lakes annually, much of it in the form of tiny “microplastics” small enough to be ingested or embedded in flesh. Hirsch had discovered nurdles, tiny plastic pellets that are melted down to create products ranging from clothing to water bottles. “I was pissed that this unknown sourced plastic material was polluting Lake Michigan and my beach environment,” said Hirsch, an activist with the West Michigan Chapter of the Climate Reality Project.