Like NAMEPA, PlasticChange.org is working towards a marine environment free of plastic pollution. They recently released a short, entertaining video on YouTube that depicts the issue from a slightly different perspective. Bravo!
268,940 tons of plastic float through the world’s oceans, spreading, accumulating, and being swallowed or absorbed. A group of researchers led by Markus Eriksen of the Five Gyres Institute in LA made this estimate in 2014. 5.25 trillion plastic particles are sitting in the ocean, they wrote in their paper, which was the first ever estimate for the total amount of plastic in the ocean.
Garbage patches are not an accumulation of these horrific encounters between wildlife and trash, however, they are spiraling masses of something much more subtle and sinister.
“The best bumper sticker I’ve ever seen,” my grandmother told us between gifts, “was one that read ‘Throw it away? There is no away.’”
We aimed for a waste-free gift-giving this year, not buying any new items for gift wrapping whatsoever. Rather than worry about buying enough wrapping paper, gift bags, gift tags, and tissue paper, it was fun to see which bags and boxes have made a comeback year after year.
Having recently attended a NOAA workshop in New Hampshire, I was inspired to launch this blog by starting with a subject we at NAMEPA are all too familiar with - marine debris. Something that stuck with me from this workshop is…