David Letterman Taught Me Something?

I was recently watching a segment on David Letterman's show featuring Captain Charles Moore.  It was pretty eye-opening regarding the massive amounts of plastics being used and trashed by the world.  There is trash in an area of the Pacific called the North Pacific Gyre (Great Pacific Garbage Patch) that is basically filled with shards and pieces of plastic waste.  The plastic pieces are even filling beaches in Hawaii.  It's pretty disturbing and the outlook on it frankly, looks bleak.  


Please visit Fake Plastic Fish because the site has a great outline of the episode, some unbelievable facts:


- After just 3 days of tracking trash down the L.A. and San Gabriel rivers, Captain Moore found 2.3 billion pieces of trash weighing 30 tons on its way to the ocean.

- Ultimately, we consume these pollutants when we eat fish.

Visit 5 Gyres website which really explains Marine Pollution thoroughly and gives a lot of information for those interested.

What can we do?  Plastic has changed our world and will never go away and is really quite useful, but you can make a bit of difference by trying to use reusable plastics as much as possible and also take an extra minute to recycle your plastics, bring your own bags to the grocery, and avoid buying products with excess packaging.  You are the consumer... what you buy matters!  

Stay tuned for the next post and I'll let you know about a great program for those pesky caps that can't  go in your recycling bin!