Veronica Grey talks about "Ocean Plastics' in Green Living Magazine

Plastics Invading Our Oceans

BY CHERYL HURD
Surfing conjures up images of free spirits, at one with the ocean, without a care in the world. But for Surf Lady Veronica Grey, it is the world she so desperately cares about.

About a year ago, the waves called to Grey. Although the California actress and filmmaker did not know at the time, the message they carried for her, that day would change her life. She lay belly down on her surfboard and paddled her way to depths beyond the breaking waves, where she would wait for the perfect ride. On this day, the rhythm of stroke meeting ocean was interrupted. She plunged her hand into the water, and then recoiled. Between her fingers dripped a slimy substance.


“I remember the first time I felt it. I was paddling out on my board and noticed a mushy, plastic-like substance sliding through my fingers. It was gross,” she recalled, “and that’s what started my obsession with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

The patch is located between Hawaii and California in the northern Pacific Ocean, where millions of small bits of plastic have gathered in a vortex of ocean currents known as a gyre. There are five of these gyres in our oceans around the world. Grey said that 15 years ago the one in the Pacific was about the size of Texas, and now is estimated to be closer to the size of the United States.

“It’s sort of depressing facing what is really happening to our planet,” she said, explaining that an estimated 25 percent of our planet is now covered with trash.

Since the areas in the oceans where the trash collects are so remote, people tend to not think about it. “It’s a silent, deadly killer and the problem is very scary,” she continued.

Grey, who surfs about twice a week, said while currents and winds may collect the plastics in these gyres, the plastic has infiltrated every part of the ocean. She said scientists estimate there are 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of ocean. She finds plastic around her each time she enters the water.

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Upcoming Film about the Pacific Garbage Patch!

A sneak peek at the upcoming film by The Surf Lady called "Aqua Seafoam Shame" due to hit the film festivals for 2013. We'd really appreciate it if you could support our project by rating and sharing this video with all your friends on twitter and facebook! Thank you so much for your help in this important cause!!

A CALL TO END PLASTIC POLLUTION

Video by : http://HopeStudios.ca
Music by : http://seasunz-and-jbless.bandcamp.com/track/water-world-2

San Jose Students to Beautify Their School with Plastic Trash Murals and Sculptures

Students and staff are recycling plastic caps from milk jugs, butter tubs and Gatorade bottles to be used in murals and sculptures that will beautify their school. 

City sustainability coordinator Valerie Brown watched a TED Talk a few years back and was floored at what she learned.

Oceanographer Capt. Charles Moore had discovered a expansive plankton-rich patch of floating plastic garbage at sea. It was enough plastic garbage to fill two Texases. He found that currents carry the world’s plastic trash to this common place in the Pacific Ocean, and seabirds were dying with large quantities of plastic caps in their bellies. (Watch TED Talk "Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic" here.)

Brown wanted to do something. So, she asked city employees to remove the caps off everything from their milk jugs and Gatorade or soda bottles to their peanut butter jars and cream cheese or butter tubs before recycling them.

They collected a whole lot them, Brown said, and ultimately supplied Garrison-Jones Elementary School students with enough plastic caps and tops to construct a colorful underwater manatee mural a couple years ago.

Now, San Jose Elementary School’s “Green Team” is in the process of collecting plastic caps and lids for its own plastic art mural.

Green Team students have drawn pictures of what they want to create from the tops. Some of those renderings will be blown up and cut into plywood as standalone sculptures, and others will be incorporated into a mural, Janine Munns, the school family and community liaison, said.

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Facts About Plastics in the Ocean and What You Need to Know About Them

• To date, we use over 248,000 chemicals in commerce and we don't know which ones are harmful or safe. Why? Because the vast amount of research on plastics we use in our lives comes from the plastic industry.
• Greenpeace estimates that of the 200 billion pounds produced annually, 10% makes it into the ocean.
• Columbia University Researchers took all the major data sets that exist and calculated 73,878,000 pounds of plastic in the area of the gyres, which accounts for 16 million of the earth's 315 million square kilometers of ocean surface.
• Americans alone discard 22 billion pounds of plastic a year.
• To date, 177 species of marine life have been shown to ingest plastics and the number is likely to get much higher as more research is done.
• 9% of base food chain fish (which represents as much as 50% of the biomass of fish in the entire ocean) sampled in the North Pacific have been shown to ingest plastics.
• Concentrations of the chemicals in ocean-borne plastics have been shown to be up to a million times higher than the ambient sea water around it.
• According to the Ocean Conservancy's annual report, 11% of beach litter is plastic bags.
• Americans consume more than 100 billion plastic bags per year.
• In 2009, the rate for plastic bag recycling is 6.1%; and in 2010, the rate is 4.3%.
• From 2009 to 2010, plastics generated in the municipal waste stream jumped from 59,660,000 to 62,080,000 pounds.
• Coca-Cola is one the world's largest producers of plastic waste.

Quote from Stiv Wilson:

So what's a citizen to do? Unfortunately, cutting through the spin is a difficult task, but as always, when there is a lot of money to be had, injecting oneself with a healthy dose of skepticism about the intentions of chemical companies that manipulate nature for profit is a good start. What's the best solution? Remember this: if you don't consume it in the first place, it can't damage you or the environment.

Avoiding plastics is not just a personal responsibility, it's an environmental mandate and should be as common in our global society as turning off the lights when you leave the room. There is no silver bullet solution to plastic pollution, more like a silver buckshot, but it all starts with you saying two words: "No Plastic."

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