There are five zones in the world’s oceans where massive soups of plastic flotsam float. Scientists say powerful rotating ocean currents determine the locations of these vortexes in the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, & Indian Oceans. 250,000 tons per year of plastic debris wends its way to the oceans through sewers, polluted streams & rivers, or from coasts, gets swept to sea, & trapped in these swirling vortexes of garbage. They are not islands of hardened trash but confetti like & fragmented shards & objects difficult to recover from the sea. Because ocean fish mistake the debris as food, scientists have warned it inadvisable to eat fish. On Midway Island, a remote island in the North Pacific Ocean, near the north west end of the Hawaiian archipelago, thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead, their bodies filled with plastic debris they mistook as food.
This is an environmental alert way beyond the canary in the mine. The solution doesn't just include recycling. It means entirely rethinking how the resources of this planet are used--in particular petrochemicals. Corporations are caught in a vortex of their own--the spiral of greed & profiteering. They have proven incapable of stewarding the planet because their cash register mentalities can't think socially. Our survival requires wresting power from them & creating a society capable of sustaining life & suitable for human beings to live & love in.
(Photo by Chris Jordan, a photojournalist who documents the damage to birds)
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