Latest Marine debris Stories

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Winter rains like the storms California has been experiencing these past few weeks bring much-needed relief to the state's water resources. Unfortunately, that is not their only impact; they also let loose a flood of trash and debris upon the state's coast and ocean, washing millions of pounds of litter and debris from city streets and urban areas into storm drains and ultimately out to the ocean. In response, the California Coastal...

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Rainbow Light® Nutritional Systems, a leader in natural nutrition for over 25 years, is converting its entire bottled vitamin line to sustainable EcoGuard(TM) bottles. The first in the industry to be made from 100 percent recycled plastic, the innovative EcoGuard bottles are 100 percent recyclable. With annual sales of more than $60 million, Rainbow Light's conversion to EcoGuard packaging will keep more than 6 million plastic bottles from...

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., Nov. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Fishing for Energy, the innovative partnership that provides a cost-free solution for fishermen to dispose of old fishing gear and turns it into renewable energy has expanded to Virginia. Newport News is the latest port community on the east coast and first in the state of Virginia to participate. An initiative between Covanta Energy (Covanta), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y., Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Fishing for Energy has caught on in New York. Southampton will be the latest port community in the northeast to participate in the innovative partnership that provides a cost-free solution for fishermen to dispose of old fishing gear that is then processed into clean, renewable energy - in this case, at Covanta Hempstead, an Energy-from-Waste facility located in Westbury. An initiative between Covanta Energy (Covanta), the National Fish and...

Press release from PLoS ONEThe North Pacific Ocean is now commonly referred to as the world's largest garbage dump with an area the size of the continental United States covered in plastic debris. The highly mobile Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), which forages throughout the North Pacific, is quickly becoming the poster child for the effects of plastic ingestion on marine animals due to their tendency to ingest large amounts of plastic.Reporting in the open-access journal PLoS...

BOSTON, Sept. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Fishing for Energy has caught on in Massachusetts. Boston will be the latest port in the state to land the innovative partnership that provides a cost-free solution for fishermen to dispose of old fishing gear that is subsequently converted into clean, renewable energy at a Covanta Energy-from-Waste facility. An initiative among Covanta Energy (Covanta), the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

FAIRFIELD, N.J., Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- On Saturday, thousands of volunteers will hit beaches, lakes and rivers to help remove trash from our waterways by participating in Ocean Conservancy's 24th annual International Coastal Cleanup. To help with that effort, Covanta Energy is partnering with Ocean Conservancy to convert some of this year's collected debris into clean renewable energy. Covanta Energy, a world leader in the development and operation of large scale Energy-from-Waste and...

BRUSSELS, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- After a four-week journey, Project Kaisei, a study of the North Pacific Gyre and the marine debris that has collected in this oceanic region, has completed its two-boat mission to the North Pacific Gyre with the return to San Francisco Bay of the four-mast sailing boat Kaisei on August 31, 2009. Throughout the expedition, of which BIR was the main sponsor, the crew of the Kaisei and of the New Horizon kept the public abreast of all findings and preliminary...

Scientists recently returned from an expedition into the "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch."The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) crew got a close up view of the plastic debris floating in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean.The researchers left San Diego on August 2 to visit the garbage patch, located 1,000 miles off California's coast.Samples of the garbage were taken for analysis.Little has been known about the size of the "garbage...

A group of scientists is setting sail in the Pacific Ocean to study an unusual island that is made up of garbage.The so-called "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is made up of plastic debris that has been collecting under the ocean's surface as people from Asia and the US throw garbage into the water.The ocean tides have trapped most of the unwanted items in a spiral, and the suns rays have slowly broken the items into small particles. The particles become so fine that they could pose a risk to...