Eating the Plastics We Produce

As I was wandering around PlanetGreen.com, I found an interesting article about The Pacific Garbage Patch. I love going to the beach during Spring and Summer (and Fall, if it's warm enough.) So this article really hit home to me. I've seen other pictures and small articles about this issue, but I never pursued it until now.

I knew that there are lots of our "recycled" plastics have ended up in the oceans and beaches, but I didn't realize how much was actually there. After reading this, I then thought how much is actually there? How far does it go? In the article for the "Pacific Trash Vortex," they said that it is impossible to come up with a number of how much plastic is ending up in our oceans. Here is the map that Planet Green uses:

 " Researchers peg the trash gyre to be as large as the continental United States, and according to HowStuffWorks.com, every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic and plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans.." Just trying to imagine what that looks like is unbelievable. With all this plastic in the water this means that small sea creatures are eating the plastics thinking it's food, then the big fish eat them, and well...we eat those fish, which we end up eating the plastics we made in the first place. Way to go Karma! Hope this makes us learn a lesson or two.

A couple days ago, I was looking at pictures of sea birds that had died because of ingesting plastics and thinking they were food. I didn't know this problem was that bad.

We have to start caring for our beaches and recycle and throw away garbage so it doesn't end up like this. I would like to go to the beach and have it be clean and with healthy marine life. Because...

I don't want my beach to end up as...

Or my favorite sea creature to be eating this...