#savingtheoceans

Following in the footsteps of San Francisco, Seattle, and other cities around the world, the Los Angeles City Council has voted to ban single-use plastic bags. The city of angels consumes over 2 billion plastic bags annually and the council spends millions of tax money in collecting them. 

Plastic bags have a huge environmental cost as they enter landfills, waterways and ultimately the ocean.  A massive conglomeration of plastic waste in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean is said to be one or two times the size of the US state of Texas, according to Greenpeace. 

Campaign groups fought hard for the measure, which received 11-1 votes in favor from the council. The measure will go into effect on January 1st, 2014, and it makes Los Angeles the largest city in the U.S. to ban plastic bags. Not only that, but it means that by the end of 2014, over 30% of California’s population will be covered by laws regulating plastic and paper bags.

For those of you out there who still aren’t convinced that banning plastic bags is a good idea, then you must take a really good look at this photo of 100 plastic bags found in a dead sperm whale’s stomach. 

The oceans are out of site and out of mind – people can't and don’t want to protect anything they can't see. It is vital we reveal the oceans and their deteriorating state.

The Guardian have compiled 200+ oceans-related datasets into an interactive web aquarium that shows the decline in fish populations over the past 100 years. See it for yourself here.

Disturbing video captured by the Midway team. A beach “cleanup” quickly reveals both the real magnitude of the plastic pollution problem and the shocking fact that we humans are also eating plastic junk, not only figuratively, but quite literally as well.