On January 6th , I saw a great interview on The Colbert Report. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, Stephen Colbert is the host and executive producer of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series on Comedy Central. I am a huge fan of his and the show is hilarious.
Colbert’s guest was Captain Charles Moore. He’s the person who stumbled onto the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is believed to be the world’s largest dump. Plastic debris from the world over makes its way into waterways, where it’s carried out to sea and trapped in swirling ocean currents, thereby forming a trash dump in the North Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas.
On the show, Captain Moore made some great new analogies about the issue. He likened a Garbage Patch cleanup to bailing out a bathtub with the spigot still on.
During the time it would take to clean up what is currently floating in the Pacific (never mind figuring out HOW to do it), much, much more plastic would be flowing in–creating a never-ending cycle. You can’t clean up the mess until you turn off the spigot, or in the case of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch completely STOP consuming the plastic that turns into waste.
The super-colorful square foot of Hawaiian beach sand Captain Moore brought to the show further illustrated the issue. Unfortunately the color was infused by plastic that had been improperly disposed of from the world over. Nearly gone were the shells, rock, and coral that used to dominate the sand.
The Colbert Report interview with Captain Moore should serve as a gentle, funny reminder that single-use plastic bags and other plastics don’t go away just because you put them in the “Recycle” bin. We need to eliminate unnecessary consumption altogether. Some ways are easy, like bringing reusable grocery bags when you go shopping. Some ways will require us to make lifestyle changes. But, we need to start somewhere … now!
