I'm just doing a drive-by here: this is a HUGE environmental issue.
Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean
The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
But wait, it gets BETTER:
"With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping," Eriksen said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm."
The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.
Ocean current patterns may keep the flotsam stashed in a part of the world few will ever see, but the majority of its content is generated onshore, according to a report from Greenpeace last year titled "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans."
So we've been working on this floating project for the last - what, 50 years or so? Plastics: America's Gift that Keeps On Giving.
I'll wrap up with another short sequence:
"At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option," Parry said. "It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues. ... The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits."
Parry said using canvas bags to cart groceries instead of using plastic bags is a good first step; buying foods that aren't wrapped in plastics is another.
After the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned the use of plastic grocery bags earlier this year with the problem of ocean debris in mind, a slew of state bills were written to limit bag production, said Sarah Christie, a legislative director with the California Coastal Commission.
But many of the bills failed after meeting strong opposition from plastics industry lobbyists, she said.
Meanwhile, the stew in the ocean continues to grow.
Just hope this brightens your day as much as it did mine. No, really. Don't thank ME. Thank Monsanto and Dow Chemical.
I can assure you, our kids will be thanking US.