3mo ago

These Island Birds Are So Full of Plastic They Crunch When You Touch Them

www.vice.com

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

return2ozma @lemmy.world

3mo ago

These Island Birds Are So Full of Plastic They Crunch When You Touch Them

www.vice.com /en/article/these-island-birds-are-so-full-of-plastic-they-crunch-when-you-touch-them/

17 comments

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/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tET7-wG3Rvc
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
- I thought it was resource depletion?
  
  I mean you can revisit the chapter. Its mostly them fiddling about with assumptions to prevent pollution from going completely exponential, * then * it becomes resource limited.
  I'm not even sure how well the assumptions of their modeling approach would hold up these days. Its an interesting example of expert systems analysis but its pretty dated.
My dogs would love one of these!
No, but seriously, this sucks.
- 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.
- Every 100th bird has a squeaker inside!
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.
Macro plastics 😞
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!
- Suicidal nihilism is a common side effect of your body literally being full of plastic
- I have a pecker you can touch.

17 comments