#airsoftment

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.

[liliths-pillow-fort]

G36C girl

[g0reang3l]

i want to patch him up after he comes home from a hard day of work 🧍🏻‍♀️

(i think i have a problem )

scene credits: again, absolutely knaur idea 🤘😔

[actualbird]

tot is a very funny game in many areas, but i think one thing that wouldve made it even more hilarious is if we had more stories occurring before main story 5 (i.e. when luke enters the NXX investigation team and reveals himself to be an NSB agent) and IN THAT DURATION BEFORE THAT REVEAL, the game leaned WAY MORE into luke trying and failing to pass as a regular normal civilian

luke hacks into a highly secure online database and mc is like "what how do you know how to do that" and luke laughs nervously and says "i took some online courses when i was in college!"

luke drives a car like hes in the fast and the furious franchise, fully doing vehicular maneuvers like hes a getaway driver in a high-speed chase and mc is holding onto the handlebar for dear life like "HOW DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE LIKE THIS" and luke just shrugs and says "uh, video games"

luke fully manages to beat up an entire group of assailants without breaking a sweat and mc is like "OKAY. YOU ARE NOT NORMAL. WHAT. HOW. WHY????" and luke is like "self defense classes!" and shes like "you were fighting like a one man army, i do NOT believe you" and luke is silent for a moment before adding "....they were...advanced self defense classes?"

luke is a horrible liar and mc does not believe him but she also did not have enough of a wild ass imagination to jump to the conclusion that the truth is that hes a SECRET AGENT

[my100sul]

[vividless]

Going hunting w my boy wally

[marlaikko]

Late night sketch🔫

[darlingshane]

apparently he went airsofting.

[men-wearing-masks]

[aezelartist]

(No real guns are depicted, this is an airsoft replica.)

Risqué photo with AKS-74U. Featuring blåhaj.

[clarged]

[xxpereonn]

SHADOW COMPANY - PATCHES

[obedientfairie]

[laboitediabolique]

Cover of Peace Combat magazine, issue 29, March 2019, featuring Arisa Komiya

[my100sul]

[southconfessionpark]

Im sick of seeing sp x reader fanfics that are of the kids,im sure most of the writers are teens and there are teen character in south park like scott tenorman,the runaway girls,airsoft teens,etc id love to see more of them instead of x readers of 4th graders