Bon Voyage to "Junk"

On June 1st, Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation set sail from Long Beach to Hawaii on Junk, a raft they built on 15,000 plastic bottles. Why? To alert the world to the growing problem of plastic fouling our oceans. If you don't know about the Pacific Ocean Garbage patch, please get to know this gnarly floating plastic island TWICE the size of Texas. Yes, Texas! For the last 50-odd years, every piece of plastic that has made it from our shores to the Pacific Ocean has been breaking down and accumulating in the great Pacific Garbage Patch (more of a continent than a patch).

It's a huge problem and shameful how much of our plastic has been dumped and swept out into our seas. Unlike naturally occurring compounds, plastic in the ocean does not photo-degrade, it simply breaks up into ever-smaller pieces and lingers in the environment as an invisible toxic dust. Sea turtles and birds are ingesting it and even worse--tiny fragments of plastic act as sponges for persistent organic pollutants such as DDT and PCB’s, oily toxins that don’t dissolve in water. Plastic pellets in the POGP region have been found to accumulate up to one million times the level of these poisons – and they are entering the food chain from the filter feeders up. One day it is we who will be ingesting these toxins (sushi is sounding pretty good right now, huh?).

The only immediate solution is to drastically cut down on our use of plastic - NOW - plastic shopping bags and bottled water must be phased out as soon as possible. Of the 15 billion pounds of plastic the US produces each year just 1 billion is recycled. [Greenpeace] Recycling is only part of the puzzle as many complex products like cell phones and computers have so many different plastic components that sorting out the various types has been prohibitively expensive. Since the 1950’s plastic usage has increased tenfold every decade so that in 2001 the average American used 223 pounds of plastic. By the end of the decade it is estimated that our average yearly use will be 326 pounds. [Los Angeles Times] Every hour Americans use and discard 2.5 million plastic bottles, totaling 22 billion a year.

This is going to take a yeoman's effort to dismantle our global plastic addiction (and let's not forget about our friend and gateway drug OIL), so start your own personal plastic elimination commitment by coming to wish the crew of Junk a safe and media crazed "bon voyage" on Sunday June 1st, from 2:00-3:00 at the Long Beach Aquarium. Wave them well on their monumental 6-week journey, and take a stand to help solve the plastic plague.