In April, Lavers and her team broke a disturbing record: 778 pieces of plastic were found inside a single 80-day-old chick. “I’m sad to say just yesterday we blew [the record] out of the water,” she said. “In one of the most pristine corners of our planet.”
That plastic load made up nearly a fifth of the chick’s body weight.
Earth is cooked.
EDIT: Fuck, the video is hard to watch. But you should. Everybody should. The sound is awful. Sorry for the Instagram link, but as best as I can tell, it’s the original source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJ3fhlVTy1O/
I mean … there are, I think, organisms that can process plastic. Not talking about biodegradable plastics, but about all that garbage.
At the same time humans got rid of lead paint and lead everywhere. And uranium glass is more rarely used today.
Everything changes, so maybe we will rotate to something instead of plastics, and the future generations will be nostalgic over good old days of that vintage non-woke solid serious plastic world.
We already have a people being ‘nostalgic’ for plastic straws… It’s depressing that so many people are so willfully selfish that the slightest change or inconvenience to their life is met with such backlash.
On a related note, Uranium glass isn’t dangerous at all, it’s production was phased out for nuclear weapons and reactor research, not because of any threat or harm from the glass.
Nowadays you can even get virgin uranium glass again.
Vitrifying (turning to/encasing in glass) nuclear waste is one of the better ways of storing it as no chance of leaking, etc.
Where I live plastic straws are still everywhere.
Nickname checks out ; I think I’ve read it can be dangerous if you ingest it in specific situations, but mostly not.
Agreed.
Entire article is just a repost of the original from ABC news, with less information. I recommend the original:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-15/birds-crunch-full-plastic-losing-war-waste/105221266
Limits to growth called this. Chapter 4. Pollution ends up becoming the limiting factor far sooner than any other constraint in most of their model runs.
https://archive.org/details/TheLimitsToGrowth/page/n129/mode/2up
This is one of the most depressing stories I read about the state of our planet in a while, especially because this is happening in a remote place.
If anyone needs an uplifting story you could visit https://theoceancleanup.com/, they’ve been doing great work and doing more and more every year. Also if you have some left over money please check it out.
My dogs would love one of these!
No, but seriously, this sucks.
Every 100th bird has a squeaker inside!
Those plastic dog toys are kinda part of the problem. They don’t last long before they’re off to the dump, and a lot of small bits that break off get swallowed by the pooch.
My dogs (rip) always loved bones, dry pigs ears, goat horns - natural items. We don’t need the consumerist plastic crap they push on us.
Macro plastics 😞
This single issue alone should be so fucking alarming that the world would out everything on hold to fix this one problem.
Instead we live in a world where this issue is so ti y it barely registers and even if or when it does, nobody gives a shit. Dumb birds shouldn’t be swallowing shit, that’s what you’ll hear, while they load the plastic bottles in their plastic bag.
This is a solvable issue.
Just like the much, much bigger issues
Ukraine? The entire world could join together in a UN that actually does something and send the mother of all armies to Ukraine and drive Russia out, arrest Putin, and get democracy going in Russia.
Same goes for Israel and Palestine. The world could send a massive army, chase Israel out and make it surrender, arrest Netanyahu for war crimes, setup a fair plan for both Israelites and Palestinians, and keep a peace force for a while until they’re all friends
We could really kick climate change’s ass if we wanted to. We could push hard for renewables, we could in 10 year transform all the cities in the world into walkable and cyclable cities with great public transportation. We have the resources.
The rich poor divide? We could tax anyone with a worth over 10 million at 100% and use all that money to invest in all these projects.
All the plastics in the water at this point is a relatively small issue. We can easily filter out the plastics in a few years time, we can tax plastics hard so that companies will make the switch to better materials. It is not THAT hard.
All of this is in the realm of possibilities, but there is no want. People don’t give a shit.
It’s so sad
Agree with all of this
Who knew beanie babies were a prophetic warning
I’ve never been anyplace where you can just touch a wild bird, let alone determine they make a crunching sound when touched!
