That Evian bottle you haphazardly throw out after a long day at the beach or the plastic bag you flippantly discard following a trip to Target may seem to be of little consequence. After all you recycle the majority of your waste right? A restaurant to-go container here and a bit of shrink-wrap there in a random trash receptacle isn’t a big deal is it? Besides we’ve been using and throwing away the stuff for years— a little plastic can’t be all that bad… right? Wrong.
The same chemical structure that makes plastic so durable and in demand also makes it resistant to degradation meaning it is impossible for the earth to break down its elements when it is thrown away. So it sits inert in landfills on the side of the road or startlingly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
That’s right. The Pacific Trash Vortex more widely known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch becomes home to thousands of tons of your plastic waste each year. Formed by ocean currents which carry the waste along before it gets drawn to the calmer waters at the center of the North Pacific Gyre the garbage patch is made up of years of accumulated plastic waste and is getting bigger every day. Unable to biodegrade releasing toxic chemicals and harming air and sea life that mistake it for food or get caught in it its myriad of bits and pieces the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch just keeps accumulating.
Even a miniscule amount of plastic waste by each of the Earth’s more than 6 billion people continues to compound the problem. So instead of considering our tiny contribution to this collective plastic waste of little consequence let’s instead do our best to live plastic-free. Reconsider ordering that big entrée for which you know you’ll need a plastic take-out container and rethink how much you really need to go through three cases of bottled water every week. At the very least stick to plastics that can be recycled— and commit to actually doing so. The birds and fish of the North Pacific will thank us for it.