There are a half dozen ocean locations around our planet where plastic has gathered into giant tumors which are growing to astounding dimensions. I just flew over one of these tragedies…..called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” between California and Hawaii. It has grown to a size that would more than cover the state of Texas, twice; and it’s getting larger every year. It is now estimated to weigh more than 175,000 pounds…..the equivalent of more than 40,000 automobiles.
In the ocean! Between two US states! A colossal cesspool of plastic.
Why are we not outraged? Why is our government not addressing this “clear and present danger?”
I didn’t actually see this gigantic garbage flotsam from the window of the Boeing 757. In fact, only specially equipped satellites can detect it because, well, it’s mostly plastic, and not a solid mass, but a massive area of ocean water where plastic particles are unusually dense…..so dense that most marine life is extinguished.
It intrigues me to know there currently is what might be a quixotic effort to reduce this toxic tangle off our shores; but even if this is just jousting with windmills, I’m cheering for Cervantes’ hapless hero to land a blow. This enterprise — “The Ocean Cleanup” — is designed to spread its mechanical arms the length of six football fields and drag a net ten feet below the sea’s surface. Its designers hope to collect many larger plastic objects before they break down to microscopic and environmentally more threatening particles.
This device, which is just now undergoing its beta testing, is being criticized by some for the potential harm it might unintentionally do to marine life. And it would make more sense, if it were not politically so impossible, to place such devices at the mouths of the most polluting rivers around the world to catch some of the eight million tons of trash that enters the oceans each year, eighty percent of which comes from Asia.
But regardless of outcome, monitoring this imaginative non-governmental effort to mitigate the problem should motivate the rest of us to address the problem at an earlier stage and on a more personal level…..eg., when we refuse plastic utensils, replace plastic straws with wooden alternatives, reuse the same plastic item time and time again, and recycle rather than discard the plastic we cannot avoid and can no longer reuse.
In this mission, let’s be as Sancho, the peasant laborer who became squire to Don Quixote — greedy at times and cowardly, but ultimately determined and faithful.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 