Marcus Eriksen is a marine pollution expert with a PhD in science education from USC (the one in California, not the USC). He was collecting plastic found in the North Atlantic and found that most of it wasn’t large chucks for garbage floating in the oceans that can be cleaned out by putting on gloves and picking it out. Eriksen described it as a “plastic smog,” as the plastic deteriorates into small piece, aka micro-plastics.

“Plastic in the oceans breaks down so fast. It becomes a fine particulate distributed globally. Cities like New York and Miami are pumping out this plastic smog into the world’s oceans.” -Marcus Eriksen

In 2003, he went on a 2000 mile, 5 month journey down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft made from plastic bottles to bring attention to the plastic issue. Then, in 2008, he made a raft from 15,000 plastic bottles and a Cessina airplane fuselage as a cabin. This raft, appropriately named JUNK, took him on a 2,600 mile journey, that lasted 88 days. It also brought attention to the work of the 5 Gyres Institute, the organization he co-founded with his wife.

The 5 Gyre Institute is a nonprofit organization in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 2017. Their mission is to empower action against the global health crisis of plastic pollution through science, education, and adventure. If you have time, I recommend their website, they have many articles about plastics and their effects. Their website is linked below.

Sources:

-https://www.marcuseriksen.com/biography

-https://thenewtropic.com/our-plastic-paradise/

GO GREEN CLUB MEETING DECEMBER: PLASTICS!

Have you ever noticed how plastic is EVERYWHERE ? (straws, packaging, single use cutlery, cups, take out containers, packaging, toys.. look around your house, look around your school your work, any store you visit)How can we reduce our use?What happens to plastic when we "throw it away"?

We had 3 projects for the students to work on:

1. "plastic ocean snow globes" MORE OCEAN LESS PLASTIC Inspired by the 5gyres organization : https://www.5gyres.org/

Students added plastic pieces (from: grocery bags, food packaging, drink labels, styrofoam cafeteria trays) to jars that we have collected and filled it with colored water to represent plastic in an ocean, and plastic in our environment. 

2. plastic whale - we have been collecting plastic bottles and containers at school (it is amazing how many have been used !) and we are using them to create a whale art piece.

3. makers station (the kids favorite) using cartons, cardboard rolls, bottle tops, tape, and other packaging materials, the students came up with some inventive and amazing creations

this is the video we watched at our meeting: