Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate seemed to foreshadow the current state of affairs with his response. “Just how do you mean that, Sir?”

Just what is it we mean to do with all these plastics anyway? They are going to outlive all our grandchildren’s grandchildren so I think we should be doing a better job with the issue than we are.

We already have literally trillions of discarded plastic items floating in the ocean. This is difficult for me to fathom (sorry - bad pun I know, I just couldn’t resist) but it’s true.

Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere. 1

About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land. 2

This is essentially a plastic soup. It floats just below the surface of the water and is invisible to radar. It can only be seen from ships. One of the folks working hard to bring this issue to light stumbled on this by accident when he was sailing in 1997 and it was so large he ended up having to sail through it for a week. (more…)

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