trash

Come, sit by the fire and I'll tell you this holiday tale:

This week, many wee ones (and large ones too, for that matter) will tear open gifts with glee. Many of those gifts will be made of plastic in some proportion. Those gifts will be played with, and then, if they're lucky, handed down to siblings or to the less fortunate. Once they are completely loved and used up, they will be disposed of, and many will find their way out to the ocean, where they'll likely be pulled by a current into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (Like the 28,000 plastic bath toys that helped oceanographers track ocean currents back in 1992.)

I know I've been harping on the plastics/pollution issue a lot lately, but it seems like the din around the issue is growing louder. First, there's the Junk Raft, project of Algalita Marine Research Foundation. The blog's tagline is, "Sailing [from California] to Hawaii on 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessna 310, to raise awareness about plastic fouling our oceans." Yesterday was the raft's one-month mark at sea, and they say they have an estimated eight more weeks to go.