Or: Like Diamonds, Plastics are Forever

Some five “stews of plastic crap” covering 40% of the water area, are floating in our oceans, where due to high-pressure zones and wave actions, the plastic garbage is being
broken down into small bits called “nurdles”, which are ingested by fish and birds, who mistake these plastic particles for food and countless of them die each year from eating plastic, or being ensnared in it and drowning. Various guesses have been made about the total size of this floating garbage patch – some experts say it is the size of Texas; others that it is as big as the continental U.S.!

Currently, the seawater contains six times more plastic than plankton, and some plastic bits look similar in color and size to plankton, so it is easy to see why fish and birds ingest it and feed their young with this plastic “food”. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation, formed to spread the work on this humongous problem, reports that so much plastic is already in our oceans that it would take an incredible effort and expense to “filter” it out of them.

And plastic is still very much a part of our lives. Each year, about 60 billion TONS of plastic is made, and it will take several centuries to biodegrade. Meanwhile, we humans also constantly ingest the toxic chemicals used when producing plastic in packaged foods, cosmetics, varnishes, bottled water and some drug coatings. This also disrupts our gene activity.

So if we can’t “filter” the oceans, what can we do? For one thing: immediately stop buying plastic. Go through the house and get rid of everything plastic (recycle it; don’t burn it!); then find substitutes for plastic; recycle plastic bags; NEVER discard anything plastic outside or in any of our waters, and finally, TAKE THE PLEDGE TO GET OFF BOTTLED WATER! (Algalita has found that plastic discards in the oceans come from many countries, not just the U.S., and many are water bottles.)

For more information and several interesting videos, particularly “Synthetic Sea”,go to You Tube. Other interesting videos: Pacific Garbage Dump (Nightline NBC) or Great Pacific Garbage Patch, (GMA). Agalita’s website, www.agalita.org.