The Great Plastic Vortex in Our Souls!

There is a terrible place in the ocean. A place where all the trash from all over the world is collected by the currents and floats there killing ocean life and poisoning the food chain. As the above drawing depicts, plastic out numbers plankton and sea life in our oceans by 6:1 in some areas. Plastic is toxic and takes centuries to break down (if ever...)

The exact size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is unknown, but it is estimated to be as small as Texas and as large as the continental United States and contains approximately 3.5 million tons of trash. Not surprising given that the average American produces around 4.4lbs of trash per day! (And after seeing the amount of plastic packaging produced in Asia, I don't even want to know what the average is there!)

There are a handful of research groups out there trying to solve the problem of clean-up and reusing the plastic like Project Kensai, the Environmental Cleanup Coalition, the Ocean Conservancy, the JUNK raft project, among others. But the only real solution is to stop the contamination at the source...stop using and buying and making plastic!! OMG!! This is probably the most depressing thing I have ever heard in my life. Not to mention the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is said to be much worse than the Exxon Valdez. At least with the oil spill we can look to the large oil companies to blame, but this Great Floating Island of Waste is all OUR fault!

But How??

Every time we litter, every time we don't recycle, every time we purchase something plastic, or use a plastic bag instead of a reusable one, we are contributing to this massive gyre of trash growing and killing in the ocean. Recently, it was discovered that there is another Plastic Patch in the Atlantic Ocean. And who knows how many more??

What can we do? We can think about what we buy and think about what we throw away, maybe we can all bring our waste rate down to zero.

Below is a video about the Pacific Plastic Patch. It's depressing and eye-opening. I hope you will watch it.

There are some solutions and I think that we can follow them and help decrease the surplus plastic population!

Ideas from this website.

1. Go to any store and try to buy only products that are not made from, packaged with, or labeled with any kind of plastic. Most plastics do not have a recovery plan.

Our idea: We are saving all non-recoverable plastic over the next few weeks or months and using it to make a huge environmental art project. That includes bottle caps, thin plastic wrap, plastic packaging from fruits and veggies, etc.

2. Bring your own containers. Do not use plastic cups, bottles, bags, etc if you have your own reusable items. Just carry around a reusable bag with reusable items--even silverware/chopsticks, etc and inspire others to do the same.

3. Seek legislation to ban or put fees on these dangerous and deadly products. Current recovery and recycling methods are inadequate, but think about where we were even ten or twenty years ago, now most cities have a required recycling program. If companies are forced to take responsibility for recovering and reusing products from consumers after use (through bans and fees) they will make more durable products, create less waste, and reduce the financial burden on cities and taxpayers paying to reduce that waste. Why should we pay for the mess that these companies make??

Example: Concord, MA has placed a ban on bottled water starting in 2011. Reducing the amount of plastic we consume also reduces the amount of oil we consume. We have all seen the catastrophic effects of off-shore drilling. Imagine a world where oil drilling was rendered unnecessary.

4. Invent new products and cultivate an attitude to work toward a more sustainable world and support communities that demand better alternatives to waste. The effort leads to a society where the concept of waste has no place.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. And the solutions proposed are some things we can actually do to reduce waste.

Here are some original illustrations by Cloud expressing our feelings about the Great Plastic Vortex:

Peace,

Phoenix and Cloud