I heard it on all the news stations yesterday, but when I told my friends, family and neighbors they looked at me like I had two heads.

Apparently the trash of almost the entire state of California; is rushing into the ocean from the south, via the LA River (that God Awful spillway that recording artists find irresistible from shooting music videos in) to the Great San Francisco Bay, and every other po-dunk CA town in between is being pumped into the Pacific Ocean.

Because of the Pacific’s currents the trash is sent directly out to the North Pacific and spins and spins. Scientist say that it reaches from the bottom of the ocean floor all the way to the surface, it has become an island of sorts … an island that measures the size of two states of TEXAS!

This is craziness! There is everything from walmart bags to children’s toys to Frisbee’s to basketballs (still inflated) and tires still inflated and still on their rims.

What the hell is wrong with us that we are allowing this to happen?

Here on the shore the Developers of Captains Cove won in court to pump millions of gallons of treated effluent into the local inland bays that take in more water every day than they let out meaning that the CRAP is just gonna be hanging around poisoning our waters, killing our small feeder fish which will in turn kill our larger fish. Not to mention our delicious Chincoteague Oysters. You can’t get salt water goodness like that anywhere on earth but right here!

Granted our mess doesn’t look like this, but how long before ours does? It’s even absurd to pretend that this doesn’t somehow affect us. What happens to all OC’s effluent?

What happen to the crap that comes out of New York and Atlantic City? I remember seeing movies from the 70’s showing the trash crisis in New York. So where are we at with those problems now?

This Pacific Trash Vortex is being called the Eight Continent of the World. Some say it would take approximately 10,000 barges with over 50,000 workers and countless amounts of heavy equipment to clean it up.   Most of the trash is plastic, so once we retrieve it what are we going to do with it?

If there was ever a reason to stop this nonsense of buying disposable everything, the time is NOW, or we are only going to continue to be shocked by the things that we see and hear.

Parents; how many new toys did you buy your kids this year for Christmas? Toys that you may have gotten from friends with older kids that you could have recycled. How many toys do our kids grow out of or board with and we give them to shelters were they are usually thrown away, and other things, but what about our own children. A little toothbrush and some baking soda will usually make them look like new.

I am embarrassed as human being that we have such a mess in our ocean. Why are we doing this to our planet?  We must do everything we can to clean this mess up and make sure it doesn’t happen again!

Because of fear of tampering we wrap everything in plastic. If you make a gift with your own hands you can even buy shrink wrap to give it that store bought look. We need to get away from this as the expected acceptable practice.  Everyone like new, but we have got to cut the packaging, what about those awful tie wraps that hold everything secure in 3 layer box?

We need to got to Grocery stores like Europeans do with cloth totes to carry our groceries, and not buy so much prepared food that come wrapped in three different ways to open it before we can stick it in our mouths.

Look at this poor pathetic turtel with a plastic bag coming out of its mouth. What’s wrong with us? Is it an out of sight out of ming thing?  In writing this article I’m finding that this

is something folks have know about for quite some time, but yesterday it hits the major cable news shows, like it’s Revelation knowledge.

Researchers say also that it would take  multinational efforts and billions of dollars to clean this mess up, as not one nation is going to take responsibility for this behemoth. But all agree we can change our daily habit about what we buy. We can tell our friends and our friends children, that while we want to give them a present maybe we could offer them a savings bond, a hand made item like a pair of socks out of fabulous yarns or accept hand me down toys. It’s a shame but it is just since the 1950’s that we created this mess and in such a short time it has grown to this size and scale.

It kills the birds in the air as it is colorful and they think it’s fish and dive from the sky only to fill their gullet with plastic that doesn’t pass, but fills, and the animal literally starves to death full.  Sea Turtles swim up from below because a plastic bag, take on the shape of a jelly fish and it faces the same fate at the bird. Full but starving.

This is one of those thing that is gonna take each every one us to work on. We will have to start educating our friends and families, but also writing to companies and tell them that we won’t be buying their products if they do not use biodegradable plastics. Additionally we need to write our Congressman and Senator and ask that legislation be passed enforcing biodegradability in packaging. This type of packaging may cost more, but why do we have to have so much of it. Why does an electronic game smaller than my fist come in packaging as big as a frisbee? Why do we tolerate it. In the old days nothing was packaged. When you bought something you saw it on a shelf and you took it to the counter and the clerk wrapped it in store paper and tied it in twine. Both of which are biodegradable.

posted on: Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 @ 3:02 am

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