Let's talk trash.
讓我們來談談垃圾
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.
我們被教導要將在大蕭條和在二次大戰時期 我們被教導要將在大蕭條和在二次大戰時期 所建立的保守消費意識全都拋諸腦後 在戰爭後,我們需要把戰時大量的生產力 轉移到的和平時期貨物的生產上 <<生活雜誌>>就介紹了這種"用完就丢"的生活方式 聲稱這樣可以讓家庭主婦甩下洗滌碗碟的擔子 這概念在當中起了助推作用
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.
採取這種生活方式的人必須了解: 丟棄的塑膠佔據了大量空間,並且不能被生物分解 只有我們人類才能製造出大自然無法分解的廢料
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.
特別是塑膠,這是一種很難循環再用的物質 一位老師教我以"diddly point squat" (微不足道的小數目) 去形容我們所製造的垃圾中 那不到5%的塑料垃圾回收率 實在少得可憐
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.
這與塑膠的熔點有密切關係 與玻璃和金屬不同,塑膠不能透過再熔化去進行提煉 它在水沸點以下,便會開始熔解 像海綿一樣 它不會吸附油性污染物 每年回爐生產的1000億顆塑膠小球中 有一半很快會變成垃圾 而這些垃圾中的一大部分 會經河流流入大海
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.
這是洛杉磯機場附近Biona小灣內垃圾堆積的情況 這是加州州立大學長灘分校附近的漂浮物 也是我們昨天參觀的淡化水工廠的所在地
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.
儘管有飲料瓶有退瓶費 飲料瓶還是佔了流入海洋塑膠垃圾的絕大多數 在美國,每五分鐘我們就使用了兩百萬個飲料瓶 這張圖片來自TED演講者: 克裏斯•喬丹(Chris Jordan) 他巧妙地記錄了消費掉的瓶子數目之巨大,這是放大了的細節
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.
這個位於下加利福尼亞海域的偏遠海島 已經成為塑膠瓶的“儲藏庫” 無人居住的聖羅克島是許多鳥類的棲息地 位於下加州人口稀少的中部海岸 請注意這些瓶子上都有瓶蓋 由聚對苯二甲酸乙二醇酯(PET)製成的塑膠瓶 會沉入海裏,不會漂到這麼偏遠的地方 然而,來自其他工廠的瓶蓋 由一種稱為聚丙烯的塑膠製成 它們會在海面漂浮 不幸的是,瓶蓋並不在塑膠瓶回收法案的名單上
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.
讓我們追蹤一下這數以百萬計的瓶蓋 看看它們是如何漂流到大海的 來自日本的瓶蓋以一年的時間橫穿太平洋 而我們的瓶蓋則沿著加利福尼亞寒流漂行 直達卡波聖盧卡斯所在的緯度附近 10年之後,大部分來自日本的瓶蓋 漂到所謂的“東洋垃圾場” 而我們扔掉的瓶蓋則充斥了整個菲律賓 20年之後,我們看到在北太平洋環流區 出現了塑膠碎片堆積帶
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.
在西北夏威夷群島國家保護地的兩個環礁 庫爾環礁和中途島環礁上 同樣出現了這樣的情況,數以百萬計的信天翁 在這片海域覓食,吃下找到的一切 然後再回吐給幼鳥 這是一隻四個月大的黑背信天翁 它死的時候,胃裏全是這些東西 成千上萬隻如鵝一樣大小的幼鳥正在死亡線上掙扎 牠們的胃裏滿是瓶蓋 或像打火機之類的其他垃圾 但裡面絕大部分都是瓶蓋 不幸的是,它們的父母誤以為 在海面漂浮的瓶蓋是食物
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.
而瓶蓋下的扣環 也對海洋生物的性命造死威脅 這只龜名叫Mae West 牠現在仍在新奧爾良一位動物園管理員的家中生活
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.
我想知道我的家鄉—長灘市,為這個問題作出了什麼貢獻 因此,在2005年的海岸清理日 我到了長灘市最東邊的長灘半島 我們一同清理了這個長而寬的沙灘的垃圾 人們每撿起一個瓶蓋,我就付給5分 很多人加入了這個行動 這就是他們搜集到的1100個瓶蓋 我以為那天我只會花20美元左右 而最後我卻花了近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.
我按照顏色將它們分類 並在接下來的地球日 在聖佩德羅的卡布裏奧水族館進行展覽 州長阿諾.史瓦辛格和他的妻子瑪利亞路過,並與我們討論關於這次的展覽 雖然我戴上了一頂女孩子氣、以膠袋編織而成的帽子 他們還是跟我握了手 我帶他和瑪麗亞去看在夏威夷北部的渦流處的 一個浮游生物拖網 裡面的塑膠含量比浮游生物還多
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.
這就是拖網在那逐漸變成塑膠湯的海洋中拖到的樣本 用浮游生物拖網在海面拖動一英里 得到的樣品就像這個 和這個 當塑膠碎片沖上夏威夷沙灘的時候 看起來是這樣的 而這就是凱魯亞沙灘 我們的總統一家人在前往華盛頓之前就在那兒度假
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.
那麼,我們是如何通過這些樣品 得到塑膠含量比浮游生物還多的結論? 我們按體積大小將塑膠碎片分成不同類別 從5毫米到1/3毫米 少量塑膠上的持續性有機污染物濃度 比周圍的海水高出一百萬倍
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.
我們想知道,深海裏最普通的魚類 位於食物鏈底部 是否也會吞下這些毒藥 我們做了數百次“屍體檢驗” 在超過三分之一的魚胃裡都發現了塑膠碎片 最高的記錄來自一條僅2.5英寸的小魚 它小小的胃裏有84塊塑膠碎片
Now, you can buy certified organic produce. But no fishmonger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish.
你可以買到經過認證的有機製品 但沒有一個魚販 能賣你一條經過有機認證和野生捕捉的魚
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.
這就是我們留給後代的遺產 這個無法控制,“用完就扔”的社會 已經成為全球性問題 我們實在沒辦法儲存或回收所有生產的東西 我們只能把它們扔掉 現在,透過市場機能我們能辦到很多事情 然而,市場卻不能修補這個已被破壞的海洋生態系統 即使投入所有的人力物力 我們也永遠無法把海洋裏所有的塑膠垃圾清理乾淨
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.
視頻:情況正在惡化 塑膠包裝的數量不斷增加 “用完就扔”的生活方式大行其道 使這威脅已經波及了海洋
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:他對把海洋清理乾淨感到希望渺茫 把塑膠從海水中過濾出來的成本 將超出任何國家的預算 過程中也可能導致海洋生物的死亡 摩爾說:「要解決的話就要從塑膠的來源著手 在塑膠流入海洋前便要把它攬下來。」 但身處於一個被塑膠包圍的世界裡 他對此並不抱太大希望 布萊恩•魯尼為《夜線》所做的報導 加利福尼亞州長灘市
Charles Moore: Thank you.
查理斯•摩爾:謝謝你們。