Thoughts on the massive amounts of waste humans have generated, causing such devastation as a continent-wide swath of plastic trash in the Pacific.
There's no escaping the fact that we humans have done a lot to foul our planet. And just because our waste might not be in our own backyards doesn't mean it shouldn't concern us.
Case in point: A sailor named Charles Moore, taking a rarely used Pacific Ocean shortcut in 1997, came upon seas filled with plastic trash that just kept coming, day after day after day. Today, that "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" has grown to an area twice the size of the continental U.S. And it's likely to double in size over the next 10 years if people don't start reducing their use of plastic, Moore warns.
But how easy it is to buy plastic every day and not think about where it eventually ends up. In fact, it's darned hard not to buy plastic in one form or another: shampoo bottles, ketchup bottles, toothbrushes, computer keyboards, disposable pens, flashlights, dish scrubbers, etc. And even if you're fanatical about recycling as much as you can, it's almost impossible for the average person to recycle everything.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is just one sign that it's time for us to remake our lifestyles. Between climate change and depleting fresh water aquifers, dwindling fossil fuel supplies and expanding ocean dead zones, the message from Planet Earth is clear and growing louder every day: 'Stop messing me up, because you have to live here too.'
