Hurricane Bill put the kabosh on my shark dive this past weekend but, despite the high seas, the weather was gorgeous so I got to spend time with my Dad, my son Adam, and my nephew Zak exploring a bit of Narragansett, R.I. - a first-time visit for all of us.Beautiful beaches, clear water, loads of seabirds - and way too much plastic on floating in the water and clinging to the jetties. From one small patch of shore I filled a plastic garbage bag (which, incidentally, I found on that very shore) with all manner of plastic detritus.
I keep referencing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in my posts, but you don't have to look far or imagine something so vast to understand the importance of eliminating plastic from our oceans. Is there anyone who doesn't know by now that fish, turtles, sea birds, and marine mammals mistake plastic for food and die eating it? Add to that the number of marine animals that die unnecessarily because they get tangled up in lost nets or tangles of fishing line and you have a major problem, long before you get to the daunting concern about plastic breaking down and entering OUR food supply.
It is tempting to lay the blame for our plastic mess on "lazy consumers" who don't recycle or "evil corporations" that keep producing and using plastic despite the environmental harm it does - but who is offering alternatives? There is clearly an addressable market for plastic alternatives among the millions of people who do understand and care about the problem of plastics. Is anyone producing plastic alternatives to serve this market niche?
Most of the plastic items we retrieved this weekend fell into the following categories:
- Bottles,
- Bags,
- Food wrappers and juice packets, and
- Broken bits of larger items, like lawn furniture.
Alternatives to plastics exist for all of these uses, and all of these items can be recycled to extend their useful life and keep them out of the ocean. The question is: who has established a business model and marketing approach to get them out of the "green ghetto" and into the mainstream?
Anyone care to share?
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