October 27, 2007
Our Future in Plastics
You remember this famous exchange from The Graduate?
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Yes, there was certainly a future in plastics -- but it wasn’t great. Especially for the environment. In case you’ve never heard about the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, it’s a massive island of plastic floating in the middle of the once pristine Pacific Ocean, somewhere between California and Hawaii.
It’s called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option," [Chris] Parry said [a public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco]. "It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues. ... The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits.
Most of the plastics in the Pacific whirlpool come from land-based garbage. It’s our casually tossed Arrowhead water bottle. Maybe our Vons, Ralphs or even Whole Foods (yes!) plastic bag sucked into the street sewers.
There's a CBS video about the dump here.
So next time you go shopping for organic romaine lettuce or heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market, bring a canvas bag. Reuse the plastic take out containers. These are little things, yes, but it'll help more than it'll hurt.
And maybe it's up to all of us to start thinking about our future in plastics.
Photo from Algalita Marine Research Foundation



[ report this ]
I've heard about this for a while. Can never find a picture of it.
Google it for yourself, you'll find pictures of trash on beaches, trash in the los angeles river, but NO island of trash twice the size of Texas.
Maybe one the believers can find a photo or something to prove this isn't an urban legend.
Even the video linked to doesn't show any island of trash. I'm not saying there isn't any trash floating around or that we aren't doing damage to the planet, just not this twice the size of texas island of trash.
[ report this ]
I tried hard and long to find a picture of this trash island as well, but I could not. It is a little fishy, but if I've been duped then so have most of the major news outlets...if this turns out to be urban legend perpetuated by tree huggers, then i'm glad anyway that there's not a trash island in the middle of the Pacific.
[ report this ]
Sine LAist is now Digg, I'll bring up some of the comments from when this was on Digg.
If there really was an island of trash that large you'd be able to see it on Google Earth. The area of the gyre is twice the size of Texas and lots of plastic waste ends up there, but it's not like you can take a boat there and get off and walk across 500 miles of plastic island.
[ report this ]
There may not be an island, but I do remeber that barge of trash from NYC back in the 80's that had no where to go.
We just need to stop making disposable EVERYTHING. Why is everything we buy now plastic and designed to break after a few years anyhow?
[ report this ]
I also recently had no luck finding photos of the garbage island. Howstuffworks.com has a good entry about it but no pix that match the scariest descriptions.