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By Travis Harmon 06.01.08
On a usual sunny Southern California day in Long Beach, anunusual event took place. Two men were setting sail for Hawai'i on a raft madeof 15,000 plastic bottles.
One year ago on an oceanographic research trip, Dr. MarcusEricksen, Joel Paschal, and Anna Cummins, of the Algalita Marine ResearchFoundation, thought of a plan, to make a raft out of the plastic trash theywere researching and finding all over the ocean. Three months ago, the raftbegan to be built and on Sunday, June 1 it made its journey to Hawai'i to provethat humans are littering the oceans. "It's an environmental issue," Ericksensaid."It's an economic issue, ahuman health issue and it needs to end now, because it's not getting better."Dr. Ericksen has researched the oceans and has found that 10,000 pounds oftrash everyday enter the ocean from Los Angeles City alone.
"Once it goes past [the] point, it is out of sight, out ofmind," Paschal said. "It goes where people do not see it everyday."
The raft that will be sailing the 2,000-mile journey isnamed 'Junk', a pontoon raft of 15,000 plastic bottles, a Cessna 310 fuselage,a mast and a sail. "I believe it is very seaworthy," Ericksen said. It took theteam six-weeks to build the raft in the Long Beach Harbor just outside the LongBeach Aquarium. Volunteers, family, friends and organizations aided the team tomake the plan/raft float.
According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "Plastic waterbottles produced for U.S. consumption take 1.5 million barrels of oil peryear," enough energy to power 250,000 homes for one year.
Americans buy more bottled water than anywhere else in theworld. "In 2005, 26 billion water bottles were sold with 1/6 being recycled,"Lori Clark, Professor of Environment Science at Moorpark College, said. "Therest go into landfills or combustion facilities that release pollutants intothe air."
Plastic bottles generally cannot be recycled back into thesame product. The plastics are manufactured into carpet fibers or plasticlumber, which will in turn build-up in the environment, Clark said. Accordingto Clarks research, the Albatross population is having devastating side-effectsto the "floating islands of trash" in the pacific with baby Albatross ingestingand dying from plastic trash.
Recently, the California Legislative Assembly passed a bill,AB 2058, which will require major grocery stores to reduce single-use plasticbags by 71% by 2010. If this is not achieved, every customer will be charged 25cents per bag used for groceries.
In 1990, California started the curbside recycling program.An estimated 50% of trash was recycled "because people wanted to do somethingthat was good for the environment and not difficult to do themselves," Clark said.Grocery stores are selling reusable bags at inexpensive prices and people areexcited to use them because it is something they can do themselves.
Sailing to Hawai'i on15,000 plastic bottles may not solve the rising issue of the build-up ofsingle-use plastics in our oceans, but possibly a publicity event may bring theissue to the attention to people and get everyone thinking about the thingsthat are thrown away.