Please note our new location:
Tuesday, February 20th 2018
HASR Bistro
Social/dinner hour from 6 pm: talk starts 7 pm
Everybody welcome: no admission charge
No corkage charge if you buy your wine at the neighboring HASR liquor store
Cheap and easy parking at the underground municipal garage at 155 N Beretania:
Exit ramp is directly opposite HASR Bistro
---------------------------------------
Professor Christopher Sabine
Dept of Oceanography, UH-Manoa
Plastic Waste and our Throwaway Culture
The production of plastics has increased 20 fold over the last 50 years. These plastics are not only filling our landfills, but many of them end up in the ocean. The larger plastics eventually break down into smaller particles, but they never go away. A particular challenge are microbeads; small plastic balls put into toothpaste and facial scrubs. One tube of facial scrub can contain more that 300,000 plastic microbeads that look just like fish eggs to marine creatures. But there is hope for reducing our dependence on plastics and our throw away culture.
Chris is a new professor at UH this semester. Before coming here he was the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle Washington. Chris got his PhD in Chemical Oceanography from UH in 1992, so he has returned to the islands after 25 years.