Water Keeper's Alliance - Nina and Ejiro

On Wednesday September 26, we made another field trip. As we are learning more about water at the moment, we visited the Waterkeeper Alliance in Manhattan.

The Waterkeeper Alliance’s mission is to create a world where people have access to enough clean water that is safe to be consumed. According to them, more people die from water issues worldwide than anything else. To this day, oceans keep getting contaminated by plastic. About 8 tons of plastic ends up in the oceans daily and it is estimated that there will be more plastic in the ocean in weight than fish. It takes about 500 to 1,000 years for plastic to naturally breakdown. However, The Waterkeeper Alliance organizes regularly clean-up events to prevent plastic from going into the ocean and conducts programmes to educate the public and companies on this serious problem.  

We discussed the issues that New York used to face when it comes to water. New York City consists of islands, which is why back in the 1800s NYC was the transportation hub harbour. In the 1800s, the city was known as the oyster capital because there were many oysters in the harbour. However, people began overharvesting and polluting the harbours causing a decline in oysters and other sea life. The pollution became so bad that the oyster business was banned in the 1920s. From then on, the Hudson was known as a death river. The Waterkeeper Alliance started in the 1960s with a group of fishermen who saw the decline in fish because the Hudson was so polluted. They couldn’t provide food and income to their families anymore, so they sued companies that contaminated the waters with the help of an old law and evidence. With the money they got from winning the law suit they bought a boat to find more polluters to expose. From there, the organization grew and today it has around 300 waterkeepers and is present in 44 different countries all over the world.

Both of our hometowns are surrounded by water and we never realized our waterways are protected by the Water Keepers Alliance.  

 

View of the East River in NYC from Water Keepers Alliance Office

Ejiro-

Coming from the Netherlands, I’m always surrounded by water, but I never give much thought to it. In fact, half of the country is below sea level and even thought we have strong dijken (dams) that protect us, my house would basically be filled to the top with water if it ever manages to break through.

During the meeting I learned that New York’s water supplies come from a water reservoir up state. NYC has one of the safest water supplies in the USA as it is unfiltered and straight out of the spring. I was very surprised when I heard this, because when I drink the water here all I taste is chlorine. Up until that meeting, I even believed that tap water in New York was unsafe to drink. I only drank water from water bottles just to be sure, but it was explained the chlorine was used to get rid of any bacteria that could be in the water.

Nina-

My hometown in New Jersey, has the Rahway River going through it- according to NJ.com “Cranford is the Venice of New Jersey” since we are the only town that the river runs through with houses along the waterway. Before in the 1900s, people were able to swim and fish in the river but now we are no longer to since it is so polluted. Since water levels are rising, whenever it rains there are always flash floods in my town where sections of neighborhoods are known as “flood zone” where homeowners had to elevate and reconstruct their homes to be put on platforms so their houses wouldn’t be as flooded as prior years when the flooding was at its worst.

I know from prior discussions in class that the fashion industry is the 2^nd most polluting industry in the world. I also found out that about 3.6 million Olympic sized swimming pools worth of water is wasted in fashion yearly.

Water + Fashion

Water Keeper works together with Bionic, a company that makes items out of recycled ocean plastic. Nothing that they produce is single-use, so they make things such as clothes and accessories. Single use plastic is the main problem and pollution going to the ocean- about 14% is incinerated, 40% plastic ends up in landfills, and 32% goes into the ocean. Bionic uses are wasted remains to turn it into something useful that can be used for years. They create yarn fibers from the ocean plastic to sell to fashion brands instead of them using manmade fibers like synthetic and polyester. Several fashion brands: Ralph Lauren, LEVI’s, Patagonia, Gant, and Sperrys; have started to work with The Waterkeeper Alliance to make a useful contribution to the environment since the fashion industry is notorious for polluting the Earth.