Plastic waste in our oceans and waterways make up a large part of our planet’s environmental woes. Forty-seven percent of the debris washed up on Hawaii’s shorelines are estimated to be plastic. Progressive (and wealthy) San Francisco Bay is polluted by more plastics than any other major American body of water. There have been small steps in the right direction, including a rare bipartisan agreement in our legislature to ban microbeads (by July of next year). A couple of months ago, the below video was uploaded to YouTube showing a sea kayaker coming upon a turtle who has been tangled up in something one of us threw into a landfill. It takes a considerable amount of work, with a knife, to free the animal from its potential death sentence.
We have taken ourselves out of the food chain in order to control our destiny, but with our power comes an important responsibility to the animals and planet we want to be masters of. This is a good deed in a weary world.