Rubbish

A chick, fed to death by the plastic stuff we threw away.

I defy anyone to watch this video and not feel nauseated. This is the consequence of our wasteful, trash-ridden consumer society: albatross chicks, killed just days after their birth by their confused parents feeding them bits of plastic rubbish they collect from the ocean, mistakenly thinking they are pieces of food that will nourish their young.

Instead they kill them - in droves.

As one person put it: "Birds do not have as high of a range of taste buds as humans do. Albatrosses eat these plastic fragments because they look similar to the fish they eat. They cannot distinguish between food and plastic as well as humans can. They don't even understand what it is. If it's in the ocean and flowing along like a fish, how could they know?"

The Pacific is known for its ten million square mile plastic garbage patch - the Gire - where the currents of the seas have gradually gathered a vortex of human waste from around the world. See the second video below for more on this.

But it is far from alone. Whether Chinese lanterns sent into the sky by British revellers, only to fall into fields and fatally pierce the mouths and gullets of animals that chew them; or the "dead zone" of chemical waste that extends out from Texas hundreds of miles into the Gulf, humanity's cast asides are killing millions of innocent creatures whose only crime is to have been mistaken. Just today, hundreds of dead birds - mostly guillemots - were found washed ashore in thick chemical waste on the south coast of England.

So, next time you can't be bothered to recycle, or you object to reusing a supermarket bag, remember this. And if someone tells you the environmental lobby talks rubbish, ask them where they think theirs ends up.

Read more about THIS PLASTIC EARTH here.