Great Pacific Garbage Patch

So you are driving down the street having a candy bar in the perfect weather of Los Angeles. The windows are down and the fresh air is blowing through the car. The music is on and although traffic has you only moving at 25 mph, at least you are moving. What a great experience you are having listening to the lyrics of U2. “Still haven’t found what I’m lookin’ for,” blasts our of the custom speakers you had installed in your nearly new car that you worked so hard to buy. The candy melts in your mouth but because it isn’t an M&M it also melts on your hands. So that you don’t soil the interior of your car you lick off what you can and wipe what is left on your jeans…they will get a through washing soon. The last bite hits home…and oh, that nasty wrapper. It’s no big deal, one wrapper can’t make that much of a difference. You don’t want it in your nice, near new car, so you toss it out the window. You don’t want to be blatant so you hold it out and let it go when you are sure no one is looking.

I remember the highways of the 60’s and 70’s. There was trash everywhere. We have gotten so much better at not throwing our trash out of the window but we are not quite there. A candy wrapper here, a cigarette butt there…what can it hurt? We are nearly 20 million people living in Southern California…20 million candy wrappers here and there can equate to a big deal. Picture 20 million wrappers on the streets that get rained on and wash into the storm drains – they float out into the ocean. The currents take them to a trash heap the size of Texas that floats out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

That trash heap is killing the Pacific Ocean. The birds fly down and swoop up plastic bags because they think they are food.. Fish are eating the plastic. That plastic clogs their digestive systems. Nutrients can’t get past the plastic blocks them and they literally starve to death. Who’s problem is this trash heap? No one seems to be stepping up to claim it. 3.5 million tons consisting of 80% plastics is floating out there somewhere between the coast of California and Hawaii. It is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

If no one is going to clean it up, the least we can do is not further contribute to making it bigger. We do this when we refrain from throwing that wrapper out the window. Also, we can make a conscious effort to limit the use of plastics. Canvas bags at the market are reusable and keep the plastics out of the land fills or on the streets.