Boycott that bottle - don't add to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a Texas-sized ocean garbage dump of plastic debris concentrated by ocean currents that gradually turns into a life-killing sludge, was predicted by the NOAA in 1988 and explored by sailors Charles J. Moore, David de Rothschild, and trans-Pacific rower Roz Savage.

The Pacific Gyre picks up flotsam, plastic bottles, containers and objects from ships and shores, which photodegrade into ever smaller pieces, while remaining chemically a polymer even when ground down to the molecular level. Some plastics decompose within a year of entering the water, leaching potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A, PCBs, and derivatives of polystyrene. Light enough to float, and invisible to the eye, this plastic sludge poisons the web of life (neuston) of surface waters.

Besides the particles' danger to wildlife, the floating debris can absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including PCBs, DDT, and PAHs – thus concentrating toxics and endocrine disruptors. The particles are small enough to be ingested by diatoms, plankton, fish and birds and thus enters the food chain. Next stop: you.

photo: Abbotsford Today 28 Sep 2010

When Roz Savage rowed more than 18,000 km across the Pacific, she encountered the visible marks of the GPGP: “Today...the worst I have ever seen it. I saw about 30 plastic bottles, yoghurt pots and bits of packaging. There is something deeply upsetting about seeing a beautiful blue ocean glinting in the sunshine, marred by a plastic bottle bobbing along on the surface.”

Savage at sea 27 Dec 2005: photo from flickr.com

Her journey took her almost a year, and 3 ½ million oar strokes – what counts, she says, is that “people are getting the message that when it comes to taking care of our planet, just like my oar strokes, every individual action counts.”

courtesy of franklygreen.com

David de Rothschild and Plastiki, courtesy of The Guardian

De Rothschild built a catamaran from 12000 bottles, the Plastiki, to sail from Sydney Australia cross the GPGP, to raise awareness of plastic pollution. He says,”Waste is a design flaw that doesn't occur in nature. It's time to rethink the life cycles of the materials we create...” Remember the 3Rs: reduce, re-use, recycle.

There is more than one toxic ocean dump. Another is reported in the Atlantic, and recent samples of albatross suggest a second garbage patch in the Pacific. Due to the small size of the particles, the patches cannot be detected by the naked eye or by satellite, only by towing fine nets through the water.

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Quotations from UNEP "climate heroes" Savage and de Rothschild are from Tunza magazine vol.8, no.3. De Rothschild has written The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change—Or Live Through It, and an action graphic novel, The Boy the Girl the Tree. See also rozsavage.com. Wikipedia articles are referenced in the links above, and see our previous post on seabird ingestion. An essential industrial solution is cradle-to-cradle design. 

But the greatest impact could be made by you: boycott bottled water (which is often ordinary tapwater, resold to you at obscene profits), refuse to patronize its vendors, bottlers, and financiers. Above all, be conscious of your impact on the planet.

Environmental art -- a sampler

Midway: Message from the Gyre 2009
(click on photo to see details)

-- by Chris Jordan, photographer, Seattle.

These photographs of albatross chicks were made in September 2009 on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

See also his Midway video, film in preparation 2011; and his online portfolio; his TED talk; scientific explanations of the plastic debris in the Great Pacific Gyre in Wikipedia and 5MDC.

More environmental art (you will find others if you Google the term):

• animation video Shan Shui for the China Environment Protection Foundation
• Ben Zolno rap video "Your life is wrapped in plastic"
• Environmental Art 2.0 survey by Trish Kenow and Luis Perez
• dance "Trash" by Elizabeth A Budd, choreographer (dance starts at the 4 min mark)
• tutorial: how to view Environmental Art with Google Earth
• Ephemeral Art-in-Nature works from University of Guam
• recycler artist Mahmadou Tall Diedhiou, Senegal
• recycler artists of East Hawaii Cultural Council, 21st annual Trash Art show
• recycler animation From Garbage to Garden ("Do Lixo ao Jardim") by Carolina Fontenelle Mello-e-Souza of Brazil, on the poem, "Leilao de Jardim", by Cecilia Meireles.
• section on consumerism from Worldwatch Transforming Cultures (2010) discussion guide.
• Molly Scott's music (some online) and resonance therapy.
• climate change artists and gallery in Resurgence magazine; its book Images of Earth and Spirit.
• articles on artists in Orion magazine and Yes! magazine