#toxic garbage island

Hiding from the cold watching Vice documentaries on a Saturday afternoon.  This one in particular caught our eye, because we've all heard about the massive floating trash islands far out at sea.

It started out as expected…..

The plan was simple. Travel with a group of scientists to the middle of the Pacific ocean and get the "money shot" of the island.

Of course they collect plastic scraps from the ocean along the way…

In every form you can imagine….

Tiny particles of plastic pellets, bags and glitter cover the divers after every dive.

When we think of plastic in the ocean, we always imagine it as scraps that can be easily seen and collected.

But as this documentary shows, that "money shot" is going to be hard to come by, because plastic inevitably photodegrades and breaks down….

And though it may not be visible at first sight, plastic has irreversibly changed the biological integrity of our oceans.  It has broken down and become part of it, in the form of a toxic sludge.

Check out this 3-part VICE documentary, Toxic Garbage Island, an eye-opening investigation into how plastic pollution is irreversibly changing the integrity of our ocean water.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D41rO7mL6zM&t=1115s 

A small part I found interesting was the crew’s acknowledgement of their plastic habit when eating and preparing food on the boat.  They all seemed to feel trapped in a system where plastic cannot be avoided.  I remember experiencing the same malaise before changing my lifestyle with guidance from zero waste pioneers like Bea Johnson.

It goes to show that the excessive toxicity of consume-and-toss culture has long-term consequences, and so we must be open to at least a little self-control when we consider our purchases and the waste we toss away, and take into consideration that there is no “away.”  Every step of the recycling and waste process eventually sends our waste to the oceans.