Sailing to Hawaii on a Hunk of Junk
I had always been a big fan of recycling and more importantly reducing the use of plastic bottles. But after reading about a trash boat (a.k.a “Junk”) on an inter island flight earlier this month, the message really hit home.
I knew that plastic use and the amount of trash it created was bad, but I didn’t realize how out of hand it actually was. After reading the article and learning of the huge amount of plastic floating in the North Pacific Gyre (to the north of Hawaii), my jaw dropped. How could this much pollution have been created in the past 60 years? Well, the answer’s easy. We as a human race are so wasteful. We buy water from across the world contained in plastic bottles instead of drinking the water from our own faucets.
The problem with the plastic in our oceans is that it, “interrupts the feeding of marine life (birds choke on plastic trash, plankton ingest microscopic particles of plastics) and plastics release toxins into the water.”
Before reading about the “Junk”, I had already cut back heavily on my family’s use of plastic. But after learning about the pollution in the North Pacific Gyre, I need to cut back more. I hope you’ll do the same.
