Let's talk trash.
让我们来说说垃圾吧
You know, we had to be taught to renounce the powerful conservation ethic we developed during the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, we needed to direct our enormous production capacity toward creation of products for peacetime. Life Magazine helped in this effort by announcing the introduction of throwaways that would liberate the housewife from the drudgery of doing dishes.
我们曾经被告知 要放弃在大萧条时期和二战时建立起来的 强有力的环境保护道德意识 战争之后,我们需要把大量的生产力 转移到和平时期的生产上来 《生活杂志》在其中起了助推作用 宣称用完就丢的生活方式 以此将家庭主妇从洗涤碗碟的杂务中解放出来
Mental note to the liberators: throwaway plastics take a lot of space and don't biodegrade. Only we humans make waste that nature can't digest.
但这些被解放的人们应该铭记在心的是: 丢弃塑料占据了大量空间且不能生物降解 只有我们人类才能制造出大自然不能消化的废物
Plastics are also hard to recycle. A teacher told me how to express the under-five-percent of plastics recovered in our waste stream. It's diddly-point-squat. That's the percentage we recycle.
塑料同样也很难回收利用 一位老师告诉我,如果要形容 我们排放废物中不到5%的塑料垃圾回收率的话 可以用“diddle point squat”(无足轻重的小数目) 而这就是塑料可怜的回收率
Now, melting point has a lot to do with this. Plastic is not purified by the re-melting process like glass and metal. It begins to melt below the boiling point of water and does not drive off the oily contaminants for which it is a sponge. Half of each year's 100 billion pounds of thermal plastic pellets will be made into fast-track trash. A large, unruly fraction of our trash will flow downriver to the sea.
这与塑料的熔点有很大关系 与玻璃和金属不同,塑料不能通过再熔化进行提炼 在水沸点以下塑料便开始熔化 而且塑料会像海绵一样 吸附油性污染物 每年回炉生产的1000亿颗塑料小球中 有一半会很快又变成垃圾 这些垃圾中的一大部分 将不可避免地经河流流入大海
Here is the accumulation at Biona Creek next to the L.A. airport. And here is the flotsam near California State University Long Beach and the diesel plant we visited yesterday.
这是洛杉矶机场附近Biona小湾内垃圾堆积的景象 这是加州州立大学长滩分校附近的漂浮物 也是我们昨天参观的淡化水工厂所在地
In spite of deposit fees, much of this trash leading out to the sea will be plastic beverage bottles. We use two million of them in the United States every five minutes, here imaged by TED presenter Chris Jordan, who artfully documents mass consumption and zooms in for more detail.
尽管有回收报酬 但流向海洋的塑料垃圾绝大多数还是饮料瓶 在美国,每五分钟我们就使用了两百万个饮料瓶 这张图片来自TED演讲者克里斯·乔丹 他巧妙地记录了我们消费掉的瓶子数目是多么巨大,这是放大后的细节
Here is a remote island repository for bottles off the coast of Baja California. Isla San Roque is an uninhabited bird rookery off Baja's sparsely populated central coast. Notice that the bottles here have caps on them. Bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate, PET, will sink in seawater and not make it this far from civilization. Also, the caps are produced in separate factories from a different plastic, polypropylene. They will float in seawater, but unfortunately do not get recycled under the bottle bills.
这个位于下加利福尼亚海域的偏远海岛 已经成为塑料瓶的“储藏库” 无人居住的圣罗克岛是许多鸟类的栖息地 位于下加州人口稀少的中部海岸 请注意这些瓶子上都有瓶盖 塑料瓶由聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯(PET)制成 会沉入海水而不会漂到这么偏远的地方 然而,瓶盖来自另一些的工厂 由一种称为聚丙烯的塑料制成 它们会漂浮在海面上 不幸的是,瓶盖并不在退瓶法的回收名单中
Let's trace the journey of the millions of caps that make it to sea solo. After a year the ones from Japan are heading straight across the Pacific, while ours get caught in the California current and first head down to the latitude of Cabo San Lucas. After ten years, a lot of the Japanese caps are in what we call the Eastern Garbage Patch, while ours litter the Philippines. After 20 years, we see emerging the debris accumulation zone of the North Pacific Gyre.
让我们追踪这数以百万计的瓶盖 看它们是如何漂向大海的 一年时间里,来自日本的瓶盖横穿太平洋 我们的瓶盖则沿着加利福尼亚寒流漂行 起先到达的是卡波圣卢卡斯所在的纬度附近 10年之后,大多数来自日本的瓶盖 漂到了所谓的“东洋垃圾场” 而我们扔掉的瓶盖则堆积到了菲律宾 20年之后,我们看到在北太平洋环流区 出现了塑料碎片堆积带
It so happens that millions of albatross nesting on Kure and Midway atolls in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands National Monument forage here and scavenge whatever they can find for regurgitation to their chicks. A four-month old Laysan Albatross chick died with this in its stomach. Hundreds of thousands of the goose-sized chicks are dying with stomachs full of bottle caps and other rubbish, like cigarette lighters ... but, mostly bottle caps. Sadly, their parents mistake bottle caps for food tossing about in the ocean surface.
在西北夏威夷群岛国家保护地的两个环礁 库尔环礁和中途岛环礁上 生活着数以百万计的信天翁 它们在这片海域觅食,吃下能找到的所有一切 然后再回吐给幼鸟 这是一只四个月大的黑背信天翁幼鸟 它死的时候,胃里是这些东西 成千上万只鹅体形大小的幼鸟正在死亡线上挣扎 它们的胃里满是瓶盖和其他垃圾 如打火机…… 但绝大部分是瓶盖 不幸的是,它们的父母将漂在大海表面的瓶盖 误认为是食物
The retainer rings for the caps also have consequences for aquatic animals. This is Mae West, still alive at a zookeeper's home in New Orleans.
瓶盖下的扣环 也会给水生动物带来威胁 这只龟名叫Mae West(意为救生背心) 现在仍生活在新奥尔良一位动物园管理员的家中
I wanted to see what my home town of Long Beach was contributing to the problem, so on Coastal Clean-Up Day in 2005 I went to the Long Beach Peninsula, at the east end of our long beach. We cleaned up the swaths of beach shown. I offered five cents each for bottle caps. I got plenty of takers. Here are the 1,100 bottle caps they collected. I thought I would spend 20 bucks. That day I ended up spending nearly 60.
我想看看家乡长滩对这一问题作出的努力 因此,2005年的海岸清理日 我来到我们长滩市最东边的长滩半岛 我们清理了这片狭长的沙滩 每搜集一个瓶盖我付给5美分 许多人加入了行列 这就是他们搜集的1100个瓶盖 我想我要花上20美元 而那天到最后我花了接近60美元
I separated them by color and put them on display the next Earth Day at Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro. Governor Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria stopped by to discuss the display. In spite of my "girly man" hat, crocheted from plastic shopping bags, they shook my hand. (Laughter) I showed him and Maria a zooplankton trawl from the gyre north of Hawaii with more plastic than plankton.
我根据颜色将它们分类 并在接下来的地球日 在圣佩德罗的卡布里奥水族馆进行展览 施瓦辛格州长和妻子玛丽亚路过并与我们讨论了这次展览 尽管我戴着用塑料购物袋编织成的女里女气的帽子 他们还是与我握了手 我给他和玛丽亚看了个浮游动物拖网 在夏威夷北部的涡流处 塑料的量比浮游生物还多
Here's what our trawl samples from the plastic soup our ocean has become look like. Trawling a zooplankton net on the surface for a mile produces samples like this. And this. Now, when the debris washes up on the beaches of Hawaii it looks like this. And this particular beach is Kailua Beach, the beach where our president and his family vacationed before moving to Washington.
这就是在我们逐渐变成塑料汤的海洋中拖网得到的样品 在海面用浮游动物拖网拖动一英里 得到的样品就像这个 和这个 当塑料碎片冲上夏威夷沙滩的时候 看起来是这样的 而这里就是凯鲁亚沙滩 我们的总统一家在前往华盛顿之前度假的那个沙滩
Now, how do we analyze samples like this one that contain more plastic than plankton? We sort the plastic fragments into different size classes, from five millimeters to one-third of a millimeter. Small bits of plastic concentrate persistent organic pollutants up to a million times their levels in the surrounding seawater.
那么,我们是如何通过这些样品 分析得出塑料比浮游生物还多的结论呢? 我们将塑料碎片按体积大小分成不同类别 从5毫米到1/3毫米 少量塑料上浓缩的持续性有机污染物浓度 比周围海水高出一百万倍
We wanted to see if the most common fish in the deep ocean, at the base of the food chain, was ingesting these poison pills. We did hundreds of necropsies, and over a third had polluted plastic fragments in their stomachs. The record-holder, only two-and-a-half inches long, had 84 pieces in its tiny stomach.
我们想知道,深海里最普通的鱼类 位于食物链底部 是否也会吞下这些毒药丸 我们做了数百例“尸体检验” 在超过三分之一的鱼体胃里面都发现了塑料碎片 最高的记录来自一条仅2.5英寸的小鱼 它小小的胃里有84块塑料碎片
Now, you can buy certified organic produce. But no fishmonger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish.
你可以买到经过认证的有机制品 但没有一个鱼贩 能卖给你一条经过认证的有机的,野生捕捉的鱼
This is the legacy we are leaving to future generations. The throwaway society cannot be contained -- it has gone global. We simply cannot store and maintain or recycle all our stuff. We have to throw it away. Now, the market can do a lot for us, but it can't fix the natural system in the ocean we've broken. All the king's horses and all the king's men ... will never gather up all the plastic and put the ocean back together again.
这就是我们为子孙后代留下的遗产 一个无法控制的“用完就扔”的社会 已经成为全球问题 我们实在没办法储存或回收所有生产的东西 我们必须把它们扔掉 现在,我们能利用市场做很多事情 但市场不能修补我们已经破坏了的海洋自然系统 即使投入所有的人力物力 也永远无法把海洋里所有的塑料垃圾清理干净
Narrator (Video): The levels are increasing, the amount of packaging is increasing, the "throwaway" concept of living is proliferating, and it's showing up in the ocean.
视频:情况正在恶化 塑料包装的数量不断增加 “用完就扔”的生活方式大行其道 危害已经波及到了海洋
Anchor: He offers no hope of cleaning it up. Straining the ocean for plastic would be beyond the budget of any country and it might kill untold amounts of sea life in the process. The solution, Moore says, is to stop the plastic at its source: stop it on land before it falls in the ocean. And in a plastic-wrapped and packaged world, he doesn't hold out much hope for that, either. This is Brian Rooney for Nightline, in Long Beach, California.
主持人:他对把海洋清理干净感到希望渺茫 把塑料从海水中过滤出来的成本 将超出任何国家的预算 过程中也可能导致海洋生物的死亡 摩尔说,解决的方法要从塑料的来源着手 将塑料控制在陆地上,阻止其流入海洋 而身处一个被塑料袋和塑料包装包围的世界 他对此也不抱太大希望 这是布莱恩·鲁尼的《夜线》节目 发自加利福尼亚长滩市
Charles Moore: Thank you.
查尔斯·摩尔:谢谢。