Cut up your beer rings
David Potter
I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
Thanks,
dp
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David E. Potter | dpo...@xstor.com
Paul Phillips
>I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
True.
-Paul "twelve packs are twice as bad" Phillips
--
"If you encounter an alien, ask it, ``In the name of Jesus, what does
Jesus call you?'' and/or ``In the name of Jesus, do you love me like
Jesus loves me?''"
-- Michael Courtney, soc.religion.christian
Alan D Earhart
Gerald Belton <gbe...@cris.com> wrote:
>In article <34h4sn$c...@news.cerf.net>, Paul Phillips wrote:
>> In article <Cvoyn...@xstor.com> dpo...@xstor.com (David Potter) writes:
>> >I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>> >over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>> >beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
>
>> True.
>
>
>If you take the damned things to the recycler, it doesn't MATTER if you cut
>them up. You shouldn't be dumping them in the ocean cut up or not.
Everyone recycles?
Alan 'But can I dump my old sofa in the ocean?'
aear...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Anthony Fannin
: I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
: over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
: beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
True. If you look at the newer six-pack rings, you'll see they have easy
tear perforations.
Tony "too wasted to be trusted with scissors" Fannin
--
-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-==-
Tony Fannin | 'forget that blind ambition,
| and learn to trust your intuition'
fan...@svpal.org | - Jimmy Buffett -
Anne Elizabeth Callery
: They wind up at the local dump, where they get tangled around seagulls' (and
: other birds') beaks and feet.
Yes, but it's not just those plastic rings. My friend once rescued
a squirrel that had its head stuck in a yogurt container.
Anne Callery
...actually, it's lucky she didn't get bitten afterwards!
Steven Cherry
>In article <Cvoyn...@xstor.com> dpo...@xstor.com (David Potter) writes:
>>I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>>over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>>beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
>True.
> -Paul "twelve packs are twice as bad" Phillips
I don't think you can scale up these ULs. Mathematically they work, but
they don't forment properly.
Steven "another post in whose explanation vodka was involved?" Cherry
Nigel Benson
> True or False?
> I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
> over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
> beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
> Thanks,
> dp
False.
By the time a bird/dolphin has got past the sharp edges of the
ring-pull hole it would be too busy worrying about multiple
lacerations than starving.
Nige
Still wating to find reasonable beer in a can let alone aquatic beings.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail: n.m.b...@bra0119.wins.icl.co.uk
------------------------------------8<----------------------------------------
Gerald Belton
> >I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
> >over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
> >beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
> True.
I've heard this a million times, and I still don't understand.
Paul Rhodes
>David Potter (dpo...@xstor.com) wrote>
>> True or False?
>> I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>> over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>> beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
>False.
>By the time a bird/dolphin has got past the sharp edges of the
>ring-pull hole it would be too busy worrying about multiple
>lacerations than starving.
Not the ring pull, the plastic used to hold the cans together. The version I
heard was that birds could strangle themselves with them, so you should cut
each loop. No idea if it's true.
............
This is my sig, and not the responsibility of my employers
New sig. appeal: has anybody got a sig. I can have the loan of (or perhaps
a timeshare arrangement) for a few weeks until my new M-reg sig arrives?
Thanks, Paul.
Rick Kitchen
In a previous article, dpo...@xstor.com (David Potter) says:
>True or False?
>
>I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
They wind up at the local dump, where they get tangled around seagulls' (and
other birds') beaks and feet.
Rick "And don't discard your Alka-Seltzer haphazardly, either" Kitchen
--
Rick Kitchen ap...@yfn.ysu.edu
"We have so much time and so little to do. Strike that. Reverse it."
-- "Willie Wonka"
Paul Phillips
>Not the ring pull, the plastic used to hold the cans together. The version I
>heard was that birds could strangle themselves with them, so you should cut
>each loop. No idea if it's true.
I guess you guys don't watch too much on the Discovery channel. I've
seen multiple, very unhappy segments showing pelicans and other seabirds
with six pack rings holding their beaks shut.
-Paul "Watch Discovery: You can see wolves gut slower creatures, just
like on AFU!" Phillips
--
"Fucking idiot. Your position is so shaky you have to redirect followups
in some pitful attempt to get the last word. Do you think your sad attempt
to redirect them to misc.misc would work?"
-- Scott Hagie, alt.current-events.net-abuse
Derek Tearne
>
>I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
The birds in question are generally seagulls. These birds, as we all
know, often frequent rubbish dumps and could easily get entangled in
beer rings. Sea birds also sustain damage from nylon fishing line
and netting which wraps around their legs eventually leading to the loss
of the leg. They can still perch with one leg, once the second one goes...
However this is the first I've heard of dolphin noses. Most dolphins
are quite large and their noses are smooth and absent of downward
pointing feathers. I would have been surprised that any Dolphin bigger
than Hectors has a noce even close to the required size.
Hectors Dolphin is endangered, but not from plastic beer rings.
They're also the same size as a largish dog and devilishly cute.
Derek "And has an unusual shaped dorsal fin" Tearne
--
Derek Tearne. -- de...@fujitsu.co.nz -- Fujitsu New Zealand --
IMPORTANT: Before posting please ensure that your post is _really_ worth
inflicting on the world. Even if, like myself, you manage to delude your
self that it is, you will at least have had the courtesy to think first. Thanks.
gberkowitz on BIX
>In article <Cvoyn...@xstor.com> dpo...@xstor.com (David Potter) writes:
>>True or False?
>>
>>I should be cutting up those little plastic beer rings that are left
>>over from my six-pack because they get caught on bird/dolphin
>>beaks/noses and cause them to starve?
Sea turtles have died from ingesting plastic bags, which
they apparently mistake for a jellyfish. The Boston Globe
reported today of an annual beach cleanup in Massachusetts.
22 TONS of garbage, consisting of plastic, paper, glass,
and cigarette butts was retrieved in ONE DAY.
One afternoon at the beach, my wife and I began picking
up trash we found as we walked along. In 30 minutes or
so, we had two large trashbags full. (We picked up the
trashbags, too!).
--Gene
Derek Tearne
You are quite right. These things should be recycled. Assuming of
course that they are made of recycled plastic and that there happens
to be a recycling program near you.
As I pointed out earlier, although the birds in question may technically
be sea birds, they generally get caught in the rings at landfill/refuse
dumps.
Certainly one shouldn't be dumping rubbish anywhere other than refuse
collection places, be that the bin in your kitchen, a bin on a lamp-post
or a large bin marked 'recycle or drown in shit' in the local mall car park.
However there is no guarantee that, even if you are responsible in
your actions, the article of refuse will get all the way to it's
destination with falling off the back of the truck or being retrieved
from the trash can by an over zealous dog. It can still around the neck
of a bird even if you disposed of it carefully yourself.
Sure, cutting the rings isn't going to do a lot to stave off environmental
suicide. Certainly it's main benefit is in giving couch potatoes warm
'hey I do my bit fer the enviromnent, I split my beer rings!' fuzzies,
but if nothing else it's promoting environmental awareness to yet a
another group of people.
Which can't be a bad thing.
Derek "As long as they don't get _too_ complacent after this one act" Tearne
Steven Thornton
> Sea turtles have died from ingesting plastic bags, which
> they apparently mistake for a jellyfish. The Boston Globe
> reported today of an annual beach cleanup in Massachusetts.
> 22 TONS of garbage, consisting of plastic, paper, glass,
> and cigarette butts was retrieved in ONE DAY.
My favorite Boston-area beach experience was looking down and seeing a
plastic tampon applicator. Mild yuck, right? Hmm, there's another one.
And another, and another....upon closer examination, the stretch of
beach was covered with several dozen of them. Seems the little buggers
(no, that can't be right) float up out of the sewage.
Steve "no, thanks, I don't feel like swimming" Thornton
Steven Thornton
> Steven Thornton (ste...@eskimo.com) wrote:
> : My favorite Boston-area beach experience was looking down and seeing a
> : plastic tampon applicator. Mild yuck, right? Hmm, there's another one.
> : And another, and another....upon closer examination, the stretch of
> : beach was covered with several dozen of them. Seems the little buggers
> : (no, that can't be right) float up out of the sewage.
> But you don't flush the plastic ones... Well, I suppose it may be
> possible, I've just never tried it. But not only do they have
> instructions *not* to flush them, are there really so many people
> who would consider plastic a flushable material? Also, isn't sewage
> filtered many times before it's dumped into the water?
I know you're not _supposed_ to flush 'em. but people throw all sorts
of things down their toilet. I'm not real clear on how exactly they
ended up on the beach, but they were definitely there, in multitudes.
I imagine it might have something to do with the overflow system used
after a heavy rain or whatever when the sewers are (temporarily, one
hopes) overrun. I saw them on several different occasions, so it
wasn't just a one-time dump, either.
Also, and this may be UL, there were reports a while back that efforts
to clean up Boston Harbor were hampered by the existence of hundreds
of unrecorded outflow pipes dating back to the early 1800s. People
died, companies went out of business, records were lost or never kept,
so the present-day cleaner-uppers have no way of finding these sources
of raw discharge except to laboriously scuba down to the muck at the
bottom of the harbor (and the Charles) and look for them. True?
--
Steve Thornton | ste...@eskimo.com | http://www.eskimo.com/~stevet/
Lee Rudolph
>: My favorite Boston-area beach experience was looking down and seeing a
>: plastic tampon applicator.
It was on this very newsgroup that I learned to call them "beach
whistles". The beach I frequent is as far from Boston as you can
get on the Massachusetts shoreline (due north of the Turks and Caicos,
with nothing but open sea between them and me), but we see them
quite often enough, thanks.
He went on,
>: Seems the little buggers
>: (no, that can't be right) float up out of the sewage.
to which cal...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Anne Elizabeth Callery) replied:
>But you don't flush the plastic ones... Well, I suppose it may be
>possible, I've just never tried it. But not only do they have
>instructions *not* to flush them, are there really so many people
>who would consider plastic a flushable material? Also, isn't sewage
>filtered many times before it's dumped into the water?
I can only comment knowledgeably on your last question. At least
in many Massachusetts cities and towns (probably including Boston,
but not including mine, 'cause we don't HAVE sewers), the parallel
systems of "sanitary sewers" and "storm sewers" are interconnected
above a certain level. Therefore, when one system or the other
(usually the storm system, during a major downpour; but conceivably
also the sanitary system, during SuperBowl halftime) is suddenly
literally flooded, it overflows into and mixes with the other. The
sewage treatment plants can't handle huge volumes, so they overflow
in turn, and the storm system effluent isn't filtered or treated in any
case; so, for days or weeks after a downpour the local shellfish beds
have to be closed. I assume that's the same time that beach whistles
proliferate.
ObUL: I heard when I lived in New York, just around the same time
that the then-new West Side sewage plant was being built within
sight of my apartment, that every workday afternoon, just long
enough to account for elapsed time since lunchhour in the pipelines,
the screens at the (old) sewage plants would start filtering out
large numbers of used condoms.
Lee "still in sight of sewage, when I think about it" Rudolph
Anne Elizabeth Callery
: My favorite Boston-area beach experience was looking down and seeing a
: plastic tampon applicator. Mild yuck, right? Hmm, there's another one.
: And another, and another....upon closer examination, the stretch of
: beach was covered with several dozen of them. Seems the little buggers
: (no, that can't be right) float up out of the sewage.
But you don't flush the plastic ones... Well, I suppose it may be
possible, I've just never tried it. But not only do they have
instructions *not* to flush them, are there really so many people
who would consider plastic a flushable material? Also, isn't sewage
filtered many times before it's dumped into the water?
Anne Callery