Plastic Soup
Imagine a soup of garbage: plastic bags, toothbrushes, syringes, toys, packaging. Now imagine that toxic soup swirling just beneath the ocean’s surface. Got that image in your head? Good. Now, imagine that the soup is the size of two–yes, TWO–continental United States.
Only, the soup doesn’t just exist in your imagination; rather, it is very real and circulates. Indeed, the Pacific Plastic Soup stretches from the coast of east to west from California to Japan and north to south from Hawaii to the Aleutian Islands.
While researchers estimate that one-fifth of the soup’s contents come from sea vessels, the rest comes from land.
The garbage hovers just under the surface of the water, making it undetectable by satellites, but those who’ve traveled through the pacific plastic soup tell tales of wafting through garbage for weeks.
It’s not only vastly unsightly, but it’s also dangerous for wildlife as well. Autopsies of ocean-going wildlife reveal an array of human refuse in their stomachs: lighters, syringes, toys, plastic sacks and more. It’s a sad thing to know that not only are we hurting ourselves, but we’re also killing animals with our wanton waste and rendering a huge section of the oceans virtually worthless.
What’s the solution then? Stop using plastic, recycle what we have and keep it out of the ocean! Are you ready to commit to going plastic-free in 2008? I know it will certainly be a struggle for me.
February 8th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Ewwwww!
( wish I had a more intelligent sounding response, but that is seriously gross)
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February 8th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I’m so there! You better believe it! How DO we do it though? Everything, everything is made from plastics!!! I’m looking around our house and just regular things such as a binder for school stuff..plastic, car key.. plastic label. It’s just UNREAL! How DO we do it?
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February 12th, 2008 at 11:55 am
That is pretty gross. I think I saw something to that effect on the news awhile back, I just didn’t realize it was huge! great info.
I’ve been trying to start going without plastic this year, but man…it is hard! Plus I just can’t afford to throw it all out and buy new all at once! What’s a girl to do?
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March 13th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I JUST learned about this heart-wrenching phenomenon this past weekend at a Women’s Festival event in Santa Barbara that had lots of great panels having to do with the planet and the challenges we face. There are no easy answers, but I am committed to doing a little something every day. I pack my daughters lunches in re-usable plastics instead of using throw away plastic bags for instance. I recently bought a SIGG water bottle (non-plastic!) and have stopped buying bottles of water. I know my changes won’t fix the whole big mess — but for now, I am choosing to do the little things and pray a lot for consciousness to come around at a mass level.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
As moms, what about stop buying convenience products that are only used for about less than 5 minute, stuff like: juice packs, individually wrapped snacks, sandwich bags, plastic forks and spoons – but will never decompose.