A Mermaid's Tear

Gratitude | Louie Schwartzberg

2011-11-18T00:42:00.000-08:00

"Beauty and seduction are nature's tools for survival, because we protect what we fall in love with. It opens our hearts and makes us realize we are part of nature and we're not separate from it. We are connected to a universe that celebrates life. Each day that's given to you is a Gift. If you do nothing else but cultivate the response of Gratitude then each day is well lived"

This video is pure truth and beauty. It speaks exactly to what I have been expressing on this blog from the beginning. Enjoy the heart opening that it offers.

Global Earth Exchange | Radical Joy Bird

2011-06-22T17:13:00.000-07:00

Pictured above: Radical Joy Bird made from found plastic pieces next to a dead shore bird. Placed on ancient native American shell midden on polluted beach Richmond. Layering of ancient and contemporary- eternal and ephemeral refuse.

Having compassion for the unloved parts of ourselves and the world is the first step to healing. This is what this wonderful organization Radical Joy for Hard Times is teaching us: embrace the sad and unloved places and you offer them the space to heal. I recently took part in their Global Earth Exchange where I went out to a place in nature that is neglected and polluted, created some art and offered the spirit of the place a bit of love.

Here's a quote from their work:

"Weʼre all aware of the damage that pollution, mining, urban development, and other environ-mental assaults do to the places we love. Yet still we feel deeply connected to these places. It is by actually seeking out these wounded places, sharing our stories, and opening ourselves to the possibility of finding and making beauty there that we transform both ourselves and the place. We do this through a simple, yet deeply meaningful process called the Earth Exchange.
We call it an Earth Exchange because in the process of enacting it, an exchange is made between people and place. People receive meaning and beauty from a place they might previously have seen as spoiled or even worthless, and the place receives compassion and creativity from the people who care about it."

The beach where I made these Radical Joy Birds is just near my house in Richmond. On a recent day of trying to clean up the garbage on the beach I was totally disheartened by the futility of my efforts. How could it possibly make any difference at all, it's never ending! I know that any real positive change in our environment has to start from within us. I realized that the polluted beach is so deeply connected our inner pollution. This is what we've manifested by being so disconnected from nature. Doing this Earth Exchange and actions like it help to heal this disconnection on a deeper spiritual level and has really given me some feeling of being empowered and hopeful. I know that when we notice the beauty in nature, even in the saddest places, Mother Earth smiles upon us with infinite appreciation that she's not forgotten.

Pictured here: this Radical Joy Bird is made from sharp pieces of rusted metal I found here. The heavy winds we've had lately uncovered lot's of this rusted metal I've never see before here. It's very sharp and dangerous.
Above: My radical joy doggie- always showing me how to love being in nature

Water Deva

2011-04-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

"Water is a Deva- a divine being who offers her body to be used as the basis of life" says PR Tigunait, a Tantric scholar. Reading these words in the recent Yoga Journal set me adrift to contemplate on this lovely thought. Water does have a magical essence: healing, invigorating, meditative, cleansing, sacred and beautiful beyond description. I've always been drawn like a magnet to the great source of all water, the sea. Something about it gives me a feeling of expansiveness, peace and belonging, as if she were a mother or a goddess calling me home to myself. After a recent diving experience I said to my husband that I felt completely renewed like I'd been baptized again. There's just no other feeling like being in the expansive blue full body caressing embrace of water. The myriad wild wonders revealed beneath her blue cloak are so infinitely marvelous.

Throughout my life the sea has soothed me, supported me and celebrated with me. Perhaps replacing the mother that I lost when far too young. The fact is we wouldn't exist without precious, beautiful water. How heartbreaking then to know how polluted and abused water all over the world is today. She is sick and suffering in a toxic mix of chemicals, oil, radiation, garbage and plastic. Why do we use water sources as a dumping ground for what we don't want to have or see anymore? Don't we know that by poisoning it we are poisoning ourselves? Perhaps it's time to start revering water as the divine being that it is. I owe water my life and wish I could protect it, but fear it's too late. On this earth day I send a prayer out into the world that we will start to honor the sacred source of life itself. In my dream for the planet I throw my arms around the oceans and return that tight embrace hoping to give back just a drop of what the divine water Deva has given me.

The heartbreaking story of an unappreciated lover named Earth

2011-04-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

Midway's Albatrosses Survive the Tsunami (but will they survive the plastic tsunami?)

2011-03-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

By Brandon Keim Email Author

The famed albatrosses of Midway Atoll took a beating from the tsunami, but their population will survive, say biologists on the islands.
There are, of course, more pressing concerns in the tsunami’s aftermath than wildlife, and some might balk at paying attention to birds right now. But compassion isn’t a zero-sum game, and Midway Atoll is one of Earth’s natural treasures: 2.4 square miles of coral ringing a deep-sea mountaintop halfway between Honolulu and Tokyo, a flyspeck of dry land that’s home to several million seabirds.

Roughly two-thirds of all Laysan albatrosses live on Midway’s two islands, as do one-third of all black-footed albatrosses, and about 60 people. Many of them work at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. They had time to prepare for the tsunami, which struck late on the night of March 10. Nobody was hurt; after the waves receded, they checked on the wildlife.
An estimated 1,000 Laysan adults were killed, and tens of thousands of chicks, said Refuge official Barry Stieglitz. Those figures represent just the first wave of mortality, as adults who were at sea when the tsunami hit may be unable to find their young on returning. Chicks now wandering on shore may be doomed — but in the long run, the population as a whole will recover.
“The loss of all these chicks is horrible. It’s going to represent a significant portion of this year’s Laysan albatross hatch. But in terms of overall population health, the most important animals are the proven, breeding adults,” said Stieglitz. “In the long term, the greatest impact would be if we lost more adults. The population should come through this just fine.”
On a sadder note, however, one of the wandering chicks is the first short-tailed albatross to hatch on Midway in decades. The species was hunted to near-extinction in the 19th century, its feathers so fashionable that a population of millions was reduced to a handful of juveniles who stayed at sea during the carnage. (Young short-tailed albatrosses live in the open ocean for several years before mating.) About 3,000 of the species now survive, and a few have recently made a home on Midway.
“If the chick lost one parent, it could be in danger. If it lost both, it’s definitely out of luck,” Stieglitz said.
Another well-known avian denizen of Midway is Wisdom, a 60-year-old female Laysan albatross. Banded for identification in 1956, Wisdom is the oldest known wild bird. In February, she was spotted rearing a new chick.

“When I gaze at Wisdom, I feel as though I’ve entered a time machine,” wrote U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist John Klavitter in an email. “My mind races to the past and all the history she has observed through time.”

Midway’s Laysan albatrosses feed in waters off Alaska, flying about 50,000 miles each year as adults. Wisdom has flown between 2 and 3 million miles in her lifetime, compensating for age with smarts and efficiency. She hasn’t been spotted since the tsunami, but Stieglitz said the biologists haven’t looked for her yet. Wisdom’s nest is on high ground. They’re not too worried about her.

Mardi Gras In NOLA = Below Sea Level Plastic Garbage

2011-03-10T20:45:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras In NOLA = Below Sea Level Plastic Garbage

By Stiv Wilson on March 10, 2011
(Photo by Patrick Semansky, NOLA)

Wow. This is one of those times when you think about celebration, you think about consequence, you think about excess, you think about consumerism, you think about the fact that there are fewer than 500 people in the world working on oceanic plastic issues full time and you kind of freak out.

We have a long way to go in this movement. For all the inspiration, good work and good people sometimes the monster we fight shows his face and we're all taken aback. But never say die. Support us. Please. http://5gyres.org/

TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch Conference | Van Jones- Environmentalism=Social Justice

2011-02-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

This video is from the TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch conference which took place last November in LA. There were over 30 illuminating speakers who shared amazing information about plastic and pollution but this one in particular stood out for me. Van Jones, a brilliant environmental advocate and civil rights activist- author of "Green Collar Economy" linked environmentalism to social justice unlike anyone I've heard. The idea is so simple: the moral challenge of the movement to stop plastic waste must go hand in hand with the entire mindset of disposability which also effects the under classes. The issues of the high percentage of incarceration of the poor and impoverished communities that are degraded and polluted like Cancer Alley in Louisiana, are evidence of the interconnection of poverty and pollution in our throw away society. The concept of Biomimicry -respect for the wisdom of all species- is actually a social justice idea like democracy which is respecting the wisdom of all people. You can't have one without the other.

We don't have to pick just one issue to care about- whether we will hug a tree or hug a child- we have two arms and can hug both. Thank you Van Jones!

One Plastic Beach | Richard and Judith Lang

2011-01-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

One Plastic Beach from Tess Thackara on Vimeo.
Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang have been collecting plastic debris off one beach in Northern California for over ten years. Each piece of plastic Richard and Judith pick up comes back to their house, where it gets cleaned, categorized and stored before being used for their art. The couple make sculptures, prints, jewelry and installations with the plastic they find washed up, raising a deeper concern with the problem of plastic pollution in our seas.

To learn more about their work, visit:
www.beachplastic.com/
www.plasticforever.blogspot.com/
Camera / Edit - Eric Slatkin
Producer - Tess Thackara

Plastic Pollution Coalition | Get Started Advice for 2011

2011-01-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

Disposable plastic items are so common that it’s easy to not notice them. But disposable plastic is everywhere– the plastic straws delivered in our drinks; the plastic bags offered to us at stores; the plastic cups, bottles and utensils at nearly every social event; the plastic packaging of nearly everything in the supermarket. Once you see it for what it is—plastic pollution—it’s simple to just REFUSE. Here are some tips on how to avoid generating plastic waste.

1. Water

Bring a stainless steel water bottle rather than drinking water out of disposable plastic bottles. Purchase our cool water bottle in red, stainless steel or black at BuyGreen or grab one at just about any store. Just make sure it is not aluminum.

Don’t have your stainless steel bottle with you? Buy a glass-bottled drink. When you finish that beverage, reuse the bottle.

2. Bring Your Own Bag

Always bring your own bags whenever you shop, not just for the supermarket. By bringing your own bag, you alone can save between 400 and 600 plastic bags per year.
There are lots of cool tote bag companies out there. Just a few of the bags we like:

Citizenlove - designs by our co-founder Dianna Cohen
Envirosax – very popular in Europe
Chico bags – wonderful, small and easy to carry around in lots of colors

3. Straws

Consider some easy alternatives to the ubiquitous plastic straws.

No straw. Do you really need one?
Carry your own stainless steel straw.
Use an elegant glass straw in one of many sizes and designs

4. To Go Cups

Bring your own ceramic or stainless steel mug. Carry one in your car. Some coffee shops will even reward your thoughtfulness with a small discount on coffee or tea.

5. To Go Food Containers

Whether you prepare school lunch, order takeout or go out to eat, take along your own reusable containers. Some of the sites where you can purchase one:

6. To Go Utensils

Bring along your own utensil set, add a straw and you are all set! You can purchase sets online at To-Go Ware.

7. Lighters

Rather than buy plastic disposable lighters, consider investing in a refillable multi-use lighters. The oceans of the world and the albatross chicks who are fed these from out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean will thank you.

8. Milk

Buy your milk in a glass returnable, reusable bottle… old fashioned, but tastes great and it’s better for you. Many health food markets and farmers markets carry milk in glass bottles.

9. Choose Paper to Wrap

Wax paper is an excellent substitute to the ubiquitous stretch plastic we have been told is essential for cooking and preserving foods. Choose wax paper to wrap sandwiches, place on top of foods warmed up in the microwave, or when storing food in the fridge. Yes, it does not stick to foods like plastic – that’s exactly what’s good about it!

10. Ready to do more?

TAPPED {the trailer} | the truth about bottled water

2010-05-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Washed up FlipFlops

2010-04-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of good news. We've all seen them. Discarded flip flops washed up on beaches. Well, in several places around the world like Kenya and the Philippines they are collected and crafted into doormats and toys the sales of which are actually supporting many local economies. Here's the info below:

Flip flops: Inexpensive. Everywhere. Easily replaceable. But where do old flip flops go when they die? And what happens to the excess foam rubber from flip flop factories? There is actually an interesting (and sustainable) answer out there.

Many products on WorldofGood.com are made by cleaning and reusing material that were discarded as trash. Colorful handmade doormats keep foam rubber wastes out of landfills by transforming them into tough but lightweight doormats. The mats are lightweight and durable, constructed by hand using galvanized metal and scrap flip flops that would have otherwise gone to landfill.

Here's another scenario you can read about: On the islands of the Lamu Archipelago, off Kenya’s northern coast in the Indian Ocean, artisans use flip flop debris that washes up on the shore to make crafts - useful ones, too, including handbags, lampshades, hair clips, necklaces, toys, and curtains.

These upcycled flip flop products are an inspiring glimpse into the small yet important solutions to the giant issue of marine debris.

FUTURESTATE: Plastic Bag by Ramin Bahrani

2010-03-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

Existential, poetic and provocative, the journey of a plastic bag like you've never seen before. Glimpse into a life of the most ubiquitous thing on earth. Voiced over by the ever intriguing Werner Herzog.

Fake Plastic Fish's 2009 Plastic Resolution

2010-01-08T08:39:00.000-08:00

Here's my inspiration in action! Beth Terry shows the real ways we can all make a difference in our home environment. I've implemented some changes this year: all tips from Beth that have reduced my garbage load. Here are just a few:

1.I make my own soy milk now thus taking about 52 cartons out of the land fill each year.
2.Started composting all our food scraps.
3.Make an effort to purchase bulk foods like cereal and rice to cut down on packaging.
4.On top of bringing my own bags for shopping I also have some great reusable produce bags. Stopped using plastic bags entirely.
5.Select products not packaged in plastic if there is a choice.
6. Started this blog to help spread the word.

Thank you Beth for helping us all to become more plastic aware!

Midway. Message from the Gyre | Photography by Chris Jordan

2009-11-10T14:50:00.000-08:00

**VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED: THESE FILMS MAY CHANGE YOUR CONSUMPTION HABITS**

This is it folks... Think about what you're using, buying and throwing away. Plastic is forever and it's not all going to the landfill. It's out there floating in the ocean, millions of tons of it. It's not food. But birds and fish don't know any better. It's killing and poisoning. An innocuous cap to a milk jug, an every day lighter, a toothbrush. We've got to find a better way to live, not at the expense of so many other creatures. They have rights too... their future depends on us. Just say no to disposable plastic.
"Am I part of the cure or am I part of the disease" Coldplay

This is the trailer for their upcoming film

The Midway Journey

2009-09-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

A team of artists are currently documenting and filming the environmental catastrophe of Midway Atoll. I've covered this issue here on my blog so you can scroll down for pictures and information. I so look forward to seeing the film and any other media that comes out of this project. With the brilliant artist Chris Jordan behind the camera no doubt it will be incredible.

The following is a quote from their blog which is updated daily. The Midway Journey

"Midway Atoll, one of the remotest islands on earth, is a kaleidoscope of geography, culture, human history, and natural wonder. It also serves as a lens into one of the most profound and symbolic environmental tragedies of our time: the deaths by starvation of thousands of albatrosses who mistake floating plastic trash for food.

Five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, are traveling to Midway to witness the catastrophic effect of our disposable culture on some of the world’s most beautiful and symbolic creatures. But even more, they are embarking on an introspective journey to confront a vitally relevant question: In this time of unprecedented global crisis, how can we move through grief, denial, despair and immobility into new territories of acceptance, possibility, and wise action?"

The Bay vs. The Bag

2009-07-07T18:41:00.000-07:00

This video by Save the Bay is fantastic! Please enjoy it's potent message...

"Plastic bags pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle and kill animals. In fact, approximately one million plastic bags pollute San Francisco Bay each year. Trash Bay flows into the ocean to join the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a floating island of trash estimated at twice the size of Texas where plastic particles are more abundant than plankton."

Did you know?

* Up to 90% of floating debris is plastic, which never biodegrades.
* Plastic trash has entangled, suffocated, or poisoned at least 267 known animal species worldwide.
* A study found an average of three pieces of trash along every foot of streams leading to San Francisco Bay – half of which is plastic.
* 1.37 million plastic bags were removed from coastal areas worldwide on just one day.

SavetheBay.org

In the News~ Australian town Bans Plastic Water Bottles

2009-07-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Check out this article in the Yahoo news today!! (in my opinion: if we can't ban bottled water then I would go as far to suggest an "environmental destruction tax" on them. Or something like carbon offset credits for their use)

SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian town is set to ban bottled water over concerns about its environmental impact, in what is believed to be a world first.Bundanoon, a picturesque rural town with a population of just 2,000, was expected to vote heavily in favour of the move with a show of hands at a public meeting later."At the moment we've got a lot of community support behind it. We're confident the town is going to back it," said activist John Dee.

"We believe Bundanoon is the world's first town that has got its retailers to ban bottled water. We haven't found it anywhere else."

Local opinion was incensed when beverage company Norlex Holdings announced plans to tap an underground reservoir in the town, truck the water up to Sydney and then send it back in bottled form."The company has been looking to extract water locally, bottle it in Sydney and bring it back here to sell it again," said Dee."It made people look at the environmental impact of bottled water and the community has been quite vocal about it."

Dee, whose Do Something group was instrumental in a plastic bags ban in Coles Bay, Tasmania, said he hoped the ban would make people think twice about buying bottled water.

"It's possible it will extend to other places. The main idea is to get people thinking about their usage of bottled water -- we're spending about half a billion dollars on it here in Australia," he said.Retailers in the New South Wales town, south of Sydney, have already agreed to stop stocking bottled water.

Activists say bottling water causes unnecessary use of plastics and fuel for transport. A New South Wales study found that in 2006, the industry was responsible for releasing 60,000 tonnes of gases blamed for global warming.

*Please enjoy the related post by Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish about bottled water.

Let's Trash Plastic Bags!

2009-06-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Plastic bags have invaded our planet like a plague. Each year the world uses somewhere near to 500 billion plastic bags out of which the US uses an estimated 100 billion- equivalent to 12 million barrels of oil.

Only about 2% of these bags are recycled.

Most are used just to bring an item home from the store and then thrown away into a landfill to last for another 1000 years! They are everywhere in the environment; fluttering like flags of surrender from trees and city structures and filling the oceans killing sea life in untold numbers. These innocent looking convenience items are killers because they break down into tiny, toxic particles that have become a ubiquitous part of our environment. They just shouldn't be an option anymore. (period)

Probably the worst design idea ever, no?

I recently attended a film festival in Monterey organized by Sea Studios Foundation. The theme? Plastic and the ocean. All the films were powerful and enlightening. I met many people passionately involved in the fight to reduce our plastic waste. There will be more to share about what I learned in other posts. I've included a clip here from their award winning series Strange Days on Planet Earth. Below is a quote from their blog.

"Do you know where our plastic goes?
Did you know that our oceans are filling up with plastic pollution?
Plastic fragments contaminate even the most remote locations on earth, and harmful chemicals leached by plastics are present in the bloodstream and tissues of almost every one of us.
Plastic pollution harms people, animals, and the environment. Plastic is not biodegradable. In the marine environment, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller particles that absorb toxic chemicals, are ingested by wildlife, and enter the food chain that we depend on.
Consumption of throwaway plastics, such as bottles, containers, bags, and packaging, has spiraled out of control.
Recycling is not a sustainable solution. The reality is that most of our plastic waste is landfilled, downcycled or exported to other countries. And tragically, millions of tons of plastic are poisoning our oceans.
Businesses and governments need to take responsibility for new ways to design, recover and dispose of plastics.
Plastic pollution is the visible symbol of our global crisis of over-consumption. Let's pledge to shift our societies away from the disposable habits that poison our oceans and land, eliminate our consumption of throwaway plastics, and begin embracing a culture of sustainability.
Our health, our children, and the survival of future generations depend on us."

www.SeaStudios.com
www.droptheplasticbag.org

Plastic Plague ~ Strange Day's on Planet Earth

2009-06-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

Ninety percent of the worlds magestic Albatross nest in the Midway Atoll off Northwest Hawaii. They fly up to 1000 miles to forage and fish for food. The great Pacific garbage patch is their feeding ground. This is what they come home with and feed their young. All the plastic pieces pictured here came out of the stomach of one bird. There is no room left for food and they die. Baby chicks are unwittingly being fed a diet of toxic plastic and of course don't survive. I can't think of anything more disturbing. Is this what you'd feed your young? We may not be spoon feeding our children plastic bits but the microscopic chemicals are certainly coming back up the food chain into our bodies. These birds are the "canaries in the coal mine" giving their lives to show us what we're doing to the planet.

The carcass of an albatross belly full of plastic, a good portion of which are plastic bottle caps.
(Aveda has a program now that recycles bottle caps since regular recycling programs don't. Please drop them off at your local Aveda retailer.)

Please watch this informative and critical video narrated by Edward Norton that highlights the plight of this beautiful bird.

TOXIC - GARBAGE ISLAND | Great Pacific Garbage Vortex

2009-06-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

This is the first video I saw about the Pacific Garbage Patch. It absolutely horrified me. My eyes were opened and I knew I had to make some changes in my own life. It's unimaginable.... Our oceans are a plastic soup... we have changed the composition of the oceans, carelessly creating this environmental disaster with our throw away lifestyle of non-biodegradeable garbage. Thank you to this small film crew who documented their journey. The entire film is a must watch. You can find all 12 parts here: http://www.babelgum.com/130302/toxic-garbage-island-part-9-12.html

~PLASTIC OCEAN~

2009-06-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

(A lengthy but very important article: I've highlighted some of the potent info)

A vast swath of the Pacific, as big as the US, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse.

By Susan Casey, Photographs by Gregg Segal

Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life’s purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.

It happened on August 3, 1997, a lovely day, at least in the beginning: Sunny. Little wind. Water the color of sapphires. Moore and the crew of Alguita, his 50-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran, sliced through the sea.

Returning to Southern California from Hawaii after a sailing race, Moore had altered Alguita’s course, veering slightly north. He had the time and the curiosity to try a new route, one that would lead the vessel through the eastern corner of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. This was an odd stretch of ocean, a place most boats purposely avoided. For one thing, it was becalmed. “The doldrums,” sailors called it, and they steered clear. So did the ocean’s top predators: the tuna, sharks, and other large fish that required livelier waters, flush with prey. The gyre was more like a desert—a slow, deep, clockwise-swirling vortex of air and water caused by a mountain of high-pressure air that lingered above it.

The area’s reputation didn’t deter Moore. He had grown up in Long Beach, 40 miles south of L.A., with the Pacific literally in his front yard, and he possessed an impressive aquatic résumé: deckhand, able seaman, sailor, scuba diver, surfer, and finally captain. Moore had spent countless hours in the ocean, fascinated by its vast trove of secrets and terrors. He’d seen a lot of things out there, things that were glorious and grand; things that were ferocious and humbling. But he had never seen anything nearly as chilling as what lay ahead of him in the gyre.

It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.

How did all the plastic end up here? How did this trash tsunami begin? What did it mean? If the questions seemed overwhelming, Moore would soon learn that the answers were even more so, and that his discovery had dire implications for human—and planetary—health. As Alguita glided through the area that scientists now refer to as the “Eastern Garbage Patch,” Moore realized that the trail of plastic went on for hundreds of miles. Depressed and stunned, he sailed for a week through bobbing, toxic debris trapped in a purgatory of circling currents. To his horror, he had stumbled across the 21st-century Leviathan. It had no head, no tail. Just an endless body.

“Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.” This Andy Warhol quote is emblazoned on a six-foot-long magenta and yellow banner that hangs—with extreme irony—in the solar-powered workshop in Moore’s Long Beach home. The workshop is surrounded by a crazy Eden of trees, bushes, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, ranging from the prosaic (tomatoes) to the exotic (cherimoyas, guavas, chocolate persimmons, white figs the size of baseballs). This is the house in which Moore, 59, was raised, and it has a kind of open-air earthiness that reflects his ’60s-activist roots, which included a stint in a Berkeley commune. Composting and organic gardening are serious business here—you can practically smell the humus—but there is also a kidney-shaped hot tub surrounded by palm trees. Two wet suits hang drying on a clothesline above it.

This afternoon, Moore strides the grounds. “How about a nice, fresh boysenberry?” he asks, and plucks one off a bush. He’s a striking man wearing no-nonsense black trousers and a shirt with official-looking epaulettes. A thick brush of salt-and-pepper hair frames his intense blue eyes and serious face. But the first thing you notice about Moore is his voice, a deep, bemused drawl that becomes animated and sardonic when the subject turns to plastic pollution. This problem is Moore’s calling, a passion he inherited from his father, an industrial chemist who studied waste management as a hobby. On family vacations, Moore recalls, part of the agenda would be to see what the locals threw out. “We could be in paradise, but we would go to the dump,” he says with a shrug. “That’s what we wanted to see.”

Since his first encounter with the Garbage Patch nine years ago, Moore has been on a mission to learn exactly what’s going on out there. Leaving behind a 25-year career running a furniture-restoration business, he has created the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to spread the word of his findings. He has resumed his science studies, which he’d set aside when his attention swerved from pursuing a university degree to protesting the Vietnam War. His tireless effort has placed him on the front lines of this new, more abstract battle. After enlisting scientists such as Steven B. Weisberg, Ph.D. (executive director of the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project and an expert in marine environmental monitoring), to develop methods for analyzing the gyre’s contents, Moore has sailed Alguita back to the Garbage Patch several times. On each trip, the volume of plastic has grown alarmingly. The area in which it accumulates is now twice the size of Texas.

At the same time, all over the globe, there are signs that plastic pollution is doing more than blighting the scenery; it is also making its way into the food chain. Some of the most obvious victims are the dead seabirds that have been washing ashore in startling numbers, their bodies packed with plastic: things like bottle caps, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, and colored scraps that, to a foraging bird, resemble baitfish. (One animal dissected by Dutch researchers contained 1,603 pieces of plastic.) And the birds aren’t alone. All sea creatures are threatened by floating plastic, from whales down to zooplankton. There’s a basic moral horror in seeing the pictures: a sea turtle with a plastic band strangling its shell into an hourglass shape; a humpback towing plastic nets that cut into its flesh and make it impossible for the animal to hunt. More than a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and countless fish die in the North Pacific each year, either from mistakenly eating this junk or from being ensnared in it and drowning.

Bad enough. But Moore soon learned that the big, tentacled balls of trash were only the most visible signs of the problem; others were far less obvious, and far more evil. Dragging a fine-meshed net known as a manta trawl, he discovered minuscule pieces of plastic, some barely visible to the eye, swirling like fish food throughout the water. He and his researchers parsed, measured, and sorted their samples and arrived at the following conclusion: By weight, this swath of sea contains six times as much plastic as it does plankton.

This statistic is grim—for marine animals, of course, but even more so for humans. The more invisible and ubiquitous the pollution, the more likely it will end up inside us. And there’s growing—and disturbing—proof that we’re ingesting plastic toxins constantly, and that even slight doses of these substances can severely disrupt gene activity. “Every one of us has this huge body burden,” Moore says. “You could take your serum to a lab now, and they’d find at least 100 industrial chemicals that weren’t around in 1950.” The fact that these toxins don’t cause violent and immediate reactions does not mean they’re benign: Scientists are just beginning to research the long-term ways in which the chemicals used to make plastic interact with our own biochemistry.

In simple terms, plastic is a petroleum-based mix of monomers that become polymers, to which additional chemicals are added for suppleness, inflammability, and other qualities. When it comes to these substances, even the syllables are scary. For instance, if you’re thinking that perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) isn’t something you want to sprinkle on your microwave popcorn, you’re right. Recently, the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upped its classification of PFOA to a likely carcinogen. Yet it’s a common ingredient in packaging that needs to be oil- and heat-resistant. So while there may be no PFOA in the popcorn itself, if PFOA is used to treat the bag, enough of it can leach into the popcorn oil when your butter deluxe meets your superheated microwave oven that a single serving spikes the amount of the chemical in your blood.

Other nasty chemical additives are the flame retardants known as poly-brominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). These chemicals have been shown to cause liver and thyroid toxicity, reproductive problems, and memory loss in preliminary animal studies. In vehicle interiors, PBDEs—used in moldings and floor coverings, among other things—combine with another group called phthalates to create that much-vaunted “new-car smell.” Leave your new wheels in the hot sun for a few hours, and these substances can “off-gas” at an accelerated rate, releasing noxious by-products.

It’s not fair, however, to single out fast food and new cars. PBDEs, to take just one example, are used in many products, incuding computers, carpeting, and paint. As for phthalates, we deploy about a billion pounds of them a year worldwide despite the fact that California recently listed them as a chemical known to be toxic to our reproductive systems. Used to make plastic soft and pliable, phthalates leach easily from millions of products—packaged food, cosmetics, varnishes, the coatings of timed-release pharmaceuticals—into our blood, urine, saliva, seminal fluid, breast milk, and amniotic fluid. In food containers and some plastic bottles, phthalates are now found with another compound called bisphenol A (BPA), which scientists are discovering can wreak stunning havoc in the body. We produce 6 billion pounds of that each year, and it shows: BPA has been found in nearly every human who has been tested in the United States. We’re eating these plasticizing additives, drinking them, breathing them, and absorbing them through our skin every single day.

Most alarming, these chemicals may disrupt the endocrine system—the delicately balanced set of hormones and glands that affect virtually every organ and cell—by mimicking the female hormone estrogen. In marine environments, excess estrogen has led to Twilight Zone-esque discoveries of male fish and seagulls that have sprouted female sex organs.

On land, things are equally gruesome. “Fertility rates have been declining for quite some time now, and exposure to synthetic estrogen—especially from the chemicals found in plastic products—can have an adverse effect,” says Marc Goldstein, M.D., director of the Cornell Institute for Repro-ductive Medicine. Dr. Goldstein also notes that pregnant women are particularly vulnerable: “Prenatal exposure, even in very low doses, can cause irreversible damage in an unborn baby’s reproductive organs.” And after the baby is born, he or she is hardly out of the woods. Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia who specifically studies estrogenic chemicals in plastics, warns parents to “steer clear of polycarbonate baby bottles. They’re particularly dangerous for newborns, whose brains, immune systems, and gonads are still developing.” Dr. vom Saal’s research spurred him to throw out every polycarbonate plastic item in his house, and to stop buying plastic-wrapped food and canned goods (cans are plastic-lined) at the grocery store. “We now know that BPA causes prostate cancer in mice and rats, and abnormalities in the prostate’s stem cell, which is the cell implicated in human prostate cancer,” he says. “That’s enough to scare the hell out of me.” At Tufts University, Ana M. Soto, M.D., a professor of anatomy and cellular biology, has also found connections between these chemicals and breast cancer.

As if the potential for cancer and mutation weren’t enough, Dr. vom Saal states in one of his studies that “prenatal exposure to very low doses of BPA increases the rate of postnatal growth in mice and rats.” In other words, BPA made rodents fat. Their insulin output surged wildly and then crashed into a state of resistance—the virtual definition of diabetes. They produced bigger fat cells, and more of them. A recent scientific paper Dr. vom Saal coauthored contains this chilling sentence: “These findings suggest that developmental exposure to BPA is contributing to the obesity epidemic that has occurred during the last two decades in the developed world, associated with the dramatic increase in the amount of plastic being produced each year.” Given this, it is perhaps not entirely coincidental that America’s staggering rise in diabetes—a 735 percent increase since 1935—follows the same arc.

This news is depressing enough to make a person reach for the bottle. Glass, at least, is easily recyclable. You can take one tequila bottle, melt it down, and make another tequila bottle. With plastic, recycling is more complicated. Unfortunately, that promising-looking triangle of arrows that appears on products doesn’t always signify endless reuse; it merely identifies which type of plastic the item is made from. And of the seven different plastics in common use, only two of them—PET (labeled with #1 inside the triangle and used in soda bottles) and HDPE (labeled with #2 inside the triangle and used in milk jugs)—have much of an aftermarket. So no matter how virtuously you toss your chip bags and shampoo bottles into your blue bin, few of them will escape the landfill—only 3 to 5 percent of plastics are recycled in any way.

“There’s no legal way to recycle a milk container into another milk container without adding a new virgin layer of plastic,” Moore says, pointing out that, because plastic melts at low temperatures, it retains pollutants and the tainted residue of its former contents. Turn up the heat to sear these off, and some plastics release deadly vapors. So the reclaimed stuff is mostly used to make entirely different products, things that don’t go anywhere near our mouths, such as fleece jackets and carpeting. Therefore, unlike recycling glass, metal, or paper, recycling plastic doesn’t always result in less use of virgin material. It also doesn’t help that fresh-made plastic is far cheaper.

Moore routinely finds half-melted blobs of plastic in the ocean, as though the person doing the burning realized partway through the process that this was a bad idea, and stopped (or passed out from the fumes). “That’s a concern as plastic proliferates worldwide, and people run out of room for trash and start burning plastic—you’re producing some of the most toxic gases known,” he says. The color-coded bin system may work in Marin County, but it is somewhat less effective in subequatorial Africa or rural Peru.

“Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists,” Moore says, describing how the material’s molecular structure resists biodegradation. Instead, plastic crumbles into ever-tinier fragments as it’s exposed to sunlight and the elements. And none of these untold gazillions of fragments is disappearing anytime soon: Even when plastic is broken down to a single molecule, it remains too tough for biodegradation.

Truth is, no one knows how long it will take for plastic to biodegrade, or return to its carbon and hydrogen elements. We only invented the stuff 144 years ago, and science’s best guess is that its natural disappearance will take several more centuries. Meanwhile, every year, we churn out about 60 billion tons of it, much of which becomes disposable products meant only for a single use. Set aside the question of why we’re creating ketchup bottles and six-pack rings that last for half a millennium, and consider the implications of it: Plastic never really goes away.
Ask a group of people to name an overwhelming global problem, and you’ll hear about climate change, the Middle East, or AIDS. No one, it is guaranteed, will cite the sloppy transport of nurdles as a concern. And yet nurdles, lentil-size pellets of plastic in its rawest form, are especially effective couriers of waste chemicals called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, which include known carcinogens such as DDT and PCBs.

The United States banned these poisons in the 1970s, but they remain stubbornly at large in the environment, where they latch on to plastic because of its molecular tendency to attract oils.

The word itself—nurdles—sounds cuddly and harmless, like a cartoon character or a pasta for kids, but what it refers to is most certainly not. Absorbing up to a million times the level of POP pollution in their surrounding waters, nurdles become supersaturated poison pills. They’re light enough to blow around like dust, to spill out of shipping containers, and to wash into harbors, storm drains, and creeks. In the ocean, nurdles are easily mistaken for fish eggs by creatures that would very much like to have such a snack. And once inside the body of a bigeye tuna or a king salmon, these tenacious chemicals are headed directly to your dinner table.

One study estimated that nurdles now account for 10 percent of plastic ocean debris. And once they’re scattered in the environment, they’re diabolically hard to clean up (think wayward confetti). At places as remote as Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, 2,100 miles northeast of New Zealand and a 12-hour flight from L.A., they’re commonly found mixed with beach sand. In 2004, Moore received a $500,000 grant from the state of California to investigate the myriad ways in which nurdles go astray during the plastic manufacturing process. On a visit to a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe factory, as he walked through an area where railcars unloaded ground-up nurdles, he noticed that his pant cuffs were filled with a fine plastic dust. Turning a corner, he saw windblown drifts of nurdles piled against a fence. Talking about the experience, Moore’s voice becomes strained and his words pour out in an urgent tumble: “It’s not the big trash on the beach. It’s the fact that the whole biosphere is becoming mixed with these plastic particles. What are they doing to us? We’re breathing them, the fish are eating them, they’re in our hair, they’re in our skin.”

Though marine dumping is part of the problem, escaped nurdles and other plastic litter migrate to the gyre largely from land. That polystyrene cup you saw floating in the creek, if it doesn’t get picked up and specifically taken to a landfill, will eventually be washed out to sea. Once there, it will have plenty of places to go: The North Pacific gyre is only one of five such high-pressure zones in the oceans. There are similar areas in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. Each of these gyres has its own version of the Garbage Patch, as plastic gathers in the currents. Together, these areas cover 40 percent of the sea. “That corresponds to a quarter of the earth’s surface,” Moore says. “So 25 percent of our planet is a toilet that never flushes.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 1865, a few years after Alexander Parkes unveiled a precursor to man-made plastic called Parkesine, a scientist named John W. Hyatt set out to make a synthetic replacement for ivory billiard balls. He had the best of intentions: Save the elephants! After some tinkering, he created celluloid. From then on, each year brought a miraculous recipe: rayon in 1891, Teflon in 1938, polypropylene in 1954. Durable, cheap, versatile—plastic seemed like a revelation. And in many ways, it was. Plastic has given us bulletproof vests, credit cards, slinky spandex pants. It has led to breakthroughs in medicine, aerospace engineering, and computer science. And who among us doesn’t own a Frisbee?

Plastic has its benefits; no one would deny that. Few of us, however, are as enthusiastic as the American Plastics Council. One of its recent press releases, titled “Plastic Bags—A Family’s Trusted Companion,” reads: “Very few people remember what life was like before plastic bags became an icon of convenience and practicality—and now art. Remember the ‘beautiful’ [sic] swirling, floating bag in American Beauty?”

Alas, the same ethereal quality that allows bags to dance gracefully across the big screen also lands them in many less desirable places. Twenty-three countries, including Germany, South Africa, and Australia, have banned, taxed, or restricted the use of plastic bags because they clog sewers and lodge in the throats of livestock. Like pernicious Kleenex, these flimsy sacks end up snagged in trees and snarled in fences, becoming eyesores and worse: They also trap rainwater, creating perfect little breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes.
n the face of public outrage over pictures of dolphins choking on “a family’s trusted companion,” the American Plastics Council takes a defensive stance, sounding not unlike the NRA: Plastics don’t pollute, people do.

It has a point. Each of us tosses about 185 pounds of plastic per year. We could certainly reduce that. And yet—do our products have to be quite so lethal? Must a discarded flip-flop remain with us until the end of time? Aren’t disposable razors and foam packing peanuts a poor consolation prize for the destruction of the world’s oceans, not to mention our own bodies and the health of future generations? “If ‘more is better’ and that’s the only mantra we have, we’re doomed,” Moore says, summing it up.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Ph.D., an expert on marine debris, agrees. “If you could fast-forward 10,000 years and do an archaeological dig…you’d find a little line of plastic,” he told The Seattle Times last April. “What happened to those people? Well, they ate their own plastic and disrupted their genetic structure and weren’t able to reproduce. They didn’t last very long because they killed themselves." Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we? Wrist-slittingly depressing, yes, but there are glimmers of hope on the horizon. Green architect and designer William McDonough has become an influential voice, not only in environmental circles but among Fortune 500 CEOs. McDonough proposes a standard known as “cradle to cradle” in which all manufactured things must be reusable, poison-free, and beneficial over the long haul. His outrage is obvious when he holds up a rubber ducky, a common child’s bath toy. The duck is made of phthalate-laden PVC, which has been linked to cancer and reproductive harm. “What kind of people are we that we would design like this?” McDonough asks. In the United States, it’s commonly accepted that children’s teething rings, cosmetics, food wrappers, cars, and textiles will be made from toxic materials. Other countries—and many individual companies—seem to be reconsidering. Currently, McDonough is working with the Chinese government to build seven cities using “the building materials of the future,” including a fabric that is safe enough to eat and a new, nontoxic polystyrene.

Thanks to people like Moore and McDonough, and media hits such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, awareness of just how hard we’ve bitch-slapped the planet is skyrocketing. After all, unless we’re planning to colonize Mars soon, this is where we live, and none of us would choose to live in a toxic wasteland or to spend our days getting pumped full of drugs to deal with our haywire endocrine systems and runaway cancer.

None of plastic’s problems can be fixed overnight, but the more we learn, the more likely that, eventually, wisdom will trump convenience and cheap disposability. In the meantime, let the cleanup begin: The National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is aggressively using satellites to identify and remove “ghost nets,” abandoned plastic fishing gear that never stops killing. (A single net recently hauled up off the Florida coast contained more than 1,000 dead fish, sharks, and one loggerhead turtle.) New biodegradable starch- and corn-based plastics have arrived, and Wal-Mart has signed on as a customer. A consumer rebellion against dumb and excessive packaging is afoot. And in August 2006, Moore was invited to speak about “marine debris and hormone disruption” at a meeting in Sicily convened by the science advisor to the Vatican. This annual gathering, called the International Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, brings scientists together to discuss mankind’s worst threats. Past topics have included nuclear holocaust and terrorism.

The gray plastic kayak floats next to Moore’s catamaran, Alguita, which lives in a slip across from his house. It is not a lovely kayak; in fact, it looks pretty rough. But it’s floating, a sturdy, eight-foot-long two-seater. Moore stands on Alguita’s deck, hands on hips, staring down at it. On the sailboat next to him, his neighbor, Cass Bastain, does the same. He has just informed Moore that he came across the abandoned craft yesterday, floating just offshore. The two men shake their heads in bewilderment.

“That’s probably a $600 kayak,” Moore says, adding, “I don’t even shop anymore. Anything I need will just float by.” (In his opinion, the movie Cast Away was a joke—Tom Hanks could’ve built a village with the crap that would’ve washed ashore during a storm.)

Watching the kayak bobbing disconsolately, it is hard not to wonder what will become of it. The world is full of cooler, sexier kayaks. It is also full of cheap plastic kayaks that come in more attractive colors than battleship gray. The ownerless kayak is a lummox of a boat, 50 pounds of nurdles extruded into an object that nobody wants, but that’ll be around for centuries longer than we will.

And as Moore stands on deck looking into the water, it is easy to imagine him doing the same thing 800 miles west, in the gyre. You can see his silhouette in the silvering light, caught between ocean and sky. You can see the mercurial surface of the most majestic body of water on earth. And then below, you can see the half-submerged madhouse of forgotten and discarded things. As Moore looks over the side of the boat, you can see the seabirds sweeping overhead, dipping and skimming the water. One of the journeying birds, sleek as a fighter plane, carries a scrap of something yellow in its beak. The bird dives low and then boomerangs over the horizon. Gone.