Uh-oh, looks like your recycled fleece (or fleece in general) isn’t as good for the earth as we thought it was.

According to care2.com, washing your polar fleece causing micro pieces of plastic fibre to come off and end up on the river and eventually the ocean.

Scientists found that similar levels of plastic particles were found on shorelines and in the discharge from sewage treatment plants - meaning that most of the micro plastic bits are coming from our washing machines. Fleece shreds the most: Plastic-based garments (fleece from the eco-friendly company Patagonia is made from “recycled soda-pop bottles”) lose more than 1,900 fibers per wash, all of which goes into the ocean water, and thence into the cells of sea life.

More info: care2.com

Photo Credit: Watch out for Mountain Pirates. / Caillum Smith / CC BY-NC 2.0

There is a contest on now called the New 7 Wonders of Nature Campaign and a title like that doesn’t need a whole lot of explaining.

Paddlers, the Bay of Fundy sits right between the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and is home to some of the most beautiful sea kayaking anywhere in North America. Oh yes, it’s also home to the worlds highest tidal rage which is 16.8 metre (55.1 feet) high.

You can see where I’m going with this. The Bay of Fundy is currently sitting as the only Canadian finalist and it needs your help to get the vote so it can be rightly named as one of the new 7 wonders of nature.

Quick fun fact: Did you know that 115 billion tonnes of water flow in and out of that bay each and every 12.5h tidal cycle?

You can vote here.

Photo credit: wikipedia.org

Small hydro power is a big buzz word in energy circles today. It’s clear that nobody likes big dam projects so a little bit of rebranding keeps the public happy knowing that they are only damming small, unimportant rivers.

To help debunk the myth of small hydro power the folks at Hydropower Reform Coalition developed this cute parody animation below.

I just love this short promotional video for the non-profit organization, Leave No Trace.

Boing Boing posted an article earlier this that really disturbed me. It was a collection of photos of dead albatross chicks taken on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The photo collection was absolutely devastating to me considering the massive amount of plastic in the chick’s bellies and the fact that the islands are 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Sadly, none of the photos were altered in any way.

From the website:
These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.