plastics

In It's A Wonderful Life Sam tells George to invest in plastics; in The Graduate where Mr. McGuire tells Benjamin that the secret of future economic success is just one word: "Plastics".

And we have been stuck with plastic ever since.

EnviroWoman - Living Plastic Free in 2007 has a great post on plastic waste.

She links to an article entitled Plastic Ocean.

It starts by introducing you to the North Pacific subtropical gyre, a 10-million-square-mile area 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. It’s very calm water, so garbage that makes it’s way there accumulates. Scientists call it the “Eastern Garbage Patch” and the trail of plastic trash goes on for hundreds of miles covering an area twice the size of Texas.

She also recommends the video Alphabet_Soup.wmv

this 13-minute film was shot last summer in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, in an area called the Eastern Garbage Patch. Due to currents and air pressure, most of the ocean debris coming from Asia accumulate in this endlessly circulating vortex. I had been invited along by Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (www.algalita.org) who has been quantifying the amount of pelagic plastic and its levels of toxicity.

It was not a pretty sight and this is not a happy story.

Here's a link to a 5 part series on the ocean crisis in the LA Times.

Closer to home, The Region of Waterloo has a waste management website that includes diversion and recycling.