OVER THE EDGE
November 21-December 5, 2007

S I

Earth’s eighth continent is made of garbage

Davip ReEip

THe Proenix (UBC Oxanacan)

OKANAGAN (CUP) -- Located in the Pacific Ocean be-
tween California and Hawaii and measuring in at roughly
twice the size of Texas, this elusive mass is home to hundreds
of species of marine life and is constantly expanding. It has
tripled in size since the middle of the 1990s and could grow
tenfold in the next decade.

Although no official title has been given to the mass yet, a
popular label thus far has been “The Great Pacific Garbage
Patch.”

As suggested by the name, the island is almost entirely
comprised of human-made trash. It currently weighs approxi-
mately 3.5 million tons with a concentration of 3.34 million
pieces of garbage per square kilometer, 80 per cent of which
is plastic.

Due to the Patch’s location in the North Pacific Gyre, its
growth is guaranteed to continue as this Africa-sized section
of ocean spins in a vortex that effectively traps flotsam.

The cause for the Patch’s relative lack of acknowledgment
is that the portion of the Pacific it occupies is almost entirely
unvisited. It lacks the wind to attract sailing vessels, the biol-
ogy to encourage fishing, and is not in the path of major ship-
ping lanes.

What little air movement there is blows inwards, further

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mar-
cus Eriksen, a director at the Algatita Marine Research Foun-
dation, said that “with the winds blowing in and the currents
in the gyre going circular, it’s the perfect environment for trap-
ping.”

While the trash is in the ocean, it is doing what could be
irreparable harm to sea life, the water it’s in, and eventually
humans.

Plastic resists biodegrading. Instead, a plastic shopping bag
or pop bottle will photo-degrade over time, meaning that it
will break down into smaller and smaller pieces but retain its
original molecular composition.

The result is a great amount of fine plastic sand that resem-
bles food to many creatures.

Unfortunately, the plastic cannot be digested, so sea birds
or fish can eventually starve to death with a stomach full of
plastic.

Even if the amount of plastic in a creature’s body is not
enough to block the passage of food, the small pellets act as
sponges for several toxins, concentrating chemicals such as
DDT to 1 million times the normal level.

This concentration then works its way up the food chain
until a fish is served at our dinner table.

Some birds, attracted to the shining in the ocean, approach
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in search of food. Marine re-
searchers have commented that pelicans dissected in that area

trapping the garbage.

BC Forest Industry on the Ropes

Copy Wittetr

Epiror in Cuier

Communities all around
BC are reeling from
months of mill shutdown
and closure announce-
ments, The most recent
spate of bad news from
Canfor has illustrated this
grim picture quite clearly.
Figures from the website
of the United Steelwork-
ers Union (the union rep-
resenting most BC forest
industry workers) pegs
industry-wide job losses
at 20 000 and 40 mills
closed since 2000. These
lost jobs affect small, rural
one-industry towns most
profoundly.

Grand Forks, with its
three local Pope & Talbot
sawmills, stands to lose not
just those mills teetering
on the edge of bankruptcy,
but also a local door-core
plant called Canpar, which
will close permanently in
December. The mills to-
gether employ more than
450 people.

The Vancouver Sun re-
ports that Canfor’s New
Westminster panel mill
will shut down perma-
nently on January 8%,
resulting in 126 layoff
notices being served. The
Kamloops Weyerhaeuser
sawmill will see a month’s
worth of shutdown before
Christmas in November
and December, affect-
ing 180 families. Also,
the Weyerhaeuser mill in
Princeton shuts down for
three weeks in December,
with 220 workers told to
stay home there.

This past summer, the
interior region of BC was

hard hit by shutdowns at
Tolko and West Fraser in
Quesnel, Stuart Lake Lum-
ber and Pope & Talbot in
Fort St. James, and Abi-
tibi in Mackenzie. In fact,
Mackenzie residents saw
Canfor indefinitely close
its mill there, putting more
than 450 people, or 20%
of Mackenzie residents,
out of work. Fortunately
the Pope & Talbot pulp
mill in Mackenzie, which
gets its chip supplies from
Canfor’s Mackenzie mill,
will continue to operate
since Canfor will honour
its supply agreement and

its dimension lumber to the
US. While the US housing
boom pushed demand for
Canadian lumber up to the
$400 mark in 2004/2005,
today’s US housing mar-
ket bubble bust has knee-
capped demand such that
the same lift of BC tim-
ber sells for around $220.
Meanwhile, the US dollar’s
recent plunge in value has
seen the Loonie valued at
over $1.10 US. This high
Canadian dollar has made
BC lumber exports less at-
tractive to US lumber sup-
pliers. Finally, after years
of litigation in the courts,

“More than 2000 sawmill workers are affected by
these shutdowns.

world-wide pulp prices re-
main high.

More recently, however,
Canfor has announced
temporary shutdowns at
almost all of its BC and
Alberta sawmills. PG Saw-
mill, Chetwynd, Vavenby,
Houston, Quesnel, Plateau,
Radium, Polar, Clear Lake,
Rustad, Isle Pierre, Fort St.
John and Grande Prairie
Canfor sawmills will see
no workers for varying
combinations of weeks in
the coming months. More
than 2000 sawmill work-
ers are affected by these
shutdowns. Not immune to
this industry-wide perfect
storm, Sinclar’s Winton
Global sawmill in PG will
cut its work week down to
four days.

These terrible industry
conditions stem from sev-
eral factors at play in the
lumber market. First, BC’s
interior lumber industry
exports more than 80% of

the much-debated 2006
Softwood Lumber Agree-
ment kept a billion dol-
lars of illegal US duties in
US hands. Now, just over
a year after it came into
force, aggrieved parties in
the US have forced arbitra-
tion under the provisions
of the agreement against
Canadian lumber compan-
ies for what it says are acts
of non-compliance. The
US government asserts on
behalf of the US Coalition
for Fair Lumber Imports
that Canadian lumber
companies have exceeded
their quota by more than
500 million board feet.
Also, the 15% export tax
provincial government is
supposed to collect when
prices are low has been
under collected by $116
million, the US Trade De-
partment says.

In the September 2007
Council of Forest Indus-
tries newsletter, COFI

President John Allan says
“the Ministry of Forests
has released a report indi-
cating the beetle problem
is worse than previously
thought...the weakness in
the US economy resulting
in an appreciating Canad-
ian dollar is beyond our
control. The beetle is a
natural environmental and
economic disaster...What
we now need is a re-exam-
ination of forest policy, tax
and competition policy,
our regulatory framework
and our business model.”
However, it seems with the
slump in US housing starts
forecasted to last well into
2009, BC lumber towns
will require a little more
than reorganization talks
to survive the wilderness.
To their aid are initiatives
like the Pine Beetle Recov-
ery Program. This program
allocates money from
the Northern Develop-
ment Trust fund towards
economic diversification
projects in -communities
affected by the pine beetle
infestation. For example,
Geoscience BC will re-
ceive a $750 000 grant to
fund geophysical and geo-
chemical surveys around
Mackenzie and Fort St.
James. The public will
learn what these surveys
find next spring, and could
lead to millions of dollars
worth of exploration activ-
ity around these strained
communities. Subsequent
mining, oil and gas de-
velopments have the po-
tential to keep rural com-
munities from becoming
ghost towns, at least while
these finite resources last.

have stomachs so full of lighters that they resemble conven-
iences stores. Sea turtles are also prone to mistaking plastic
bags for jelly fish, which then cause their deaths or sit in their
guts for the decades it takes the bags to break down.

In total, 267 species have been reported to have eaten from,
or become entangled in, the Patch.

According to Chris Parry of the California Coastal Com-
mission, regrettably little can be done to clean up the Patch,
although many urge that a decreased reliance on plastic is the
first step.

“At this point,” said Parry, “cleaning it up isn’t an option
... it’s just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics con-
tinues.”

“The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic
products at home and change our consumption habits.”

Cleaning up the Patch will likely cost billions of dollars and,
as an approximation, be more difficult than vacuuming every
inch of the United States. The plastic and garbage reach more
than 30 meters down into the ocean and a great number of
organisms would be destroyed in the process.

So far, no country has so much as proposed a solution, pre-
sumably because no nation wishes to claim responsibility.

Even if all plastic usage were to stop immediately, future
geologists would be able to clearly mark the stratum designat-
ing the 20th and 21st century by an indelible layer of plastic
coating the world’s oceans.

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