Best Life has published a disturbing feature about the amount of discarded plastic that collects in currentless doldrums in the open ocean.
It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.
It’s not just large pieces of plastic polluting the ocean, either, but tiny particles that spread into the water to be consumed by animal life.
Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, for all practical purposes, meaning every single plastic thing we’ve every created in the last hundred years or so of plastic creation is still with us, either in original form or at a molecular level. The idea that every single thing we create needs to be reclaimed and reused in daunting, but increasingly I’m starting to think that the challenge of controlling every last aspect of our impact on the planet is a possible and necessary task. It’s a question of whether we want our species to be a cancer or a beneficial symbiote. Plus I just want the oceans to stay healthy, because I like to play in them.
Plastic Ocean [BestLifeOnline.com]
I just went out to pick up a couple of things at the drugstore and get my lunch. I used the self check-out at the drug store and put a small jar of salsa and a box of band-aids in a bag. A store clerk appeared out of nowhere to double bag my purchase. At the place where i got my potato, they asked me if i wanted butter. The pulled a plastic container with a lid with 2 pats of butter inside out of the refrigerator and put it in my bag (the container is something they’ve just started doing).
It blows me way that not only do people not have the forethought to figure out how wasteful they’re being, but especially so after it’s been shoved in our faces for the weeks leading up to and since earth day. After earth day in 1990 people got conscientious for a little while, but found most of what would make a difference a pain, so here we are again, 17 years later rehashing it. Granted, recycling has stuck, which is great, but that’s such a small part of it. It’s a sad state of affairs when convenince trumps the health of the planet we all live on.
/rant over
agreed, bridgitte.
It scares me that, between my wife and I, we manage to fill about two large kitchen trash bags a week just with the packaging from the food we cook at home. Even the containers I buy my meat in have gotten larger over the last year, though the portions have gotten smaller.
Some fat cats are making a lot of money from packaging - they’re not going to give that up without a fight, just like the arms industry, and a huge proportion of corporate culture; the rich thrive on waste - making sure the populous are inefficient with resources so that they have to keep coming back for more, or destoying resources outright (war) so they can go in after and make a buck cleaning up and rebuilding.
It’s a monstrous cycle of waste.