Why Plastic is So Trashy

I'm not a very good environmentalist. I have three kids in a world that is staggering under the weight of overpopulation. I love long, hot showers and am not giving them up anytime soon. My favorite days are spent outdoors - hiking, camping, the beach - and because of it, I often spend hours in the car getting to remote, beautiful places. But there are two really easy things that I do that, if everyone did, could have a huge impact on planet earth - I use Sigg bottles in place of plastic bottles and I bring my bags to the grocery store. I'm not patting myself on the back here. These are easy things to do, but when I look around the grocery store, I see that largely neither is being done.

There's a big swirling patch of plastic floating around in the pacific ocean. A patch makes me think of a small piece of fabric sewn onto a pair of jeans (yes, I went to college during the 90s), but this "patch" is 90 feet deep and approximately twice the size of Texas. The patch is made up of lots of things, but 90% of them are plastic. As far as how much of that is made up of grocery bags, at this very moment, we have used 154, 534,480,999 plastic bags this year. I think. It was hard to catch the number because it was moving so fast. They make up over 10% of the debris washed up on shore every year.

Some more disturbing facts about the "patch":

"The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. But before we discuss those, it's important to look at the role of plastic. Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans [source: LA Times]. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic [source: UN Environment Program]. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean [source: Greenpeace]. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [source: Greenpeace]. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore." - howstuffworks.com

If that's not enough reason to start bringing bags, here's a great quote from Oprah's (love her) show on Earth Day:

"You wouldn't let a child open up a cabinet under the sink and start tasting the chemicals down there," Fabien says. "So why would you dump those chemicals down the drain and have them end up on your plate, which you then feed to your child?"

So if you don't already, please buy your bottles and bring your bags! Our beaches, oceans, marine life, and children will thank you. And to top it off, just like the patches in jeans, plastic is so 90's - you'll look far more stylish carrying a Sigg bottle and a well-designed reusable bag than you will holding some trashy plastic!

Resources for more information:
- http://www.reusethisbag.com/25-reasons-to-go-reusable.asp
- http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/
- http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm
- http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090422-tows-ocean-pollution/1

Great place to buy Siggs:
- www.reusablebags.com

Best reusable bags:
- $1 at Whole Foods