Let Them Eat Plastic

We’ve all seen the Brita commercials outlining the life of a plastic water bottle. “One hour in a gym (or similar situation); forever in a landfill.”

But what about, “forever in an oceanic gyre twice the size of Texas.”

Or “forever in the belly of a Black-footed Albatross” until it dies 20-years earlier than its projected average life expectancy.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a manmade island of trash containing roughly 3.5 million tons of trash. It consists of anything from bottle caps to binkies. It is essentially the Goodwill of the ocean without the good nor the will: there are no sustainable efforts to eliminate the island nor stop the continual transference of trash, though small organizations have tried.

It’s not like the trash got up and swam away on its own. Researchers have found that 80% of the trash is land-based, while the remaining 20% is from cruise ships and fishing boats. Someone drops a bottle or otherwise into the bay, it catches a wave and manages to drift along the currents into the North Pacific Gyre—thousands of miles from the nearest inhabited coastline. Depending on its starting location, it takes the trash in question an average of one to five years to reach its resting place.

But what does it do when it gets there? Like all trash it typically collects and sits there until someone takes it out. Imagine no one ever takes it out but everyone keeps throwing stuff away. Picture what your dog would do when the trash finally spilled over the edge. But instead of your kitchen, it’s the ocean. And instead of your dog, it’s Sea Turtles and Jellyfish all the way to the aforementioned Black-footed Albatross.

This is our kitchen, our garbage, and our problem. Take out the trash.