Synthetic Sojourn: The 5 Gyres Outreach Tour http://www.good.is/Stiv Wilson, the communications director of the 5 Gyres Project, is on a mission to better understand how plastic ends up in our oceans. Sat, 26 May 2012 20:49:42 -0700CakePHPhourly1en-us <![CDATA[Portland Mayor Sam Adams on the Myth of Recycling and the Cost of Plastic Pollution]]> http://www.good.is/post/portland-mayor-sam-adams-on-the-myth-of-recycling-and-the-cost-of-plastic-pollution/ http://www.good.is/post/portland-mayor-sam-adams-on-the-myth-of-recycling-and-the-cost-of-plastic-pollution/

 

This is part 11 of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Sam Adams grew up on the beach in Newport, Oregon. At age 46, he’s seen his home beach change significantly and not for the better.  Elected mayor in 2008 after serving as a city commissioner for four years, Sam has upped the sustainability ante in his city’s politics by aggressively working to mitigate Portland's footprint on the environment. He’s known for his approachable style and would most often prefer to be called "Sam" by his constituency, rather than "Mayor Adams."

At his core, Sam is a staunch environmentalist with a strong, personal connection to nature whose childhood experience is something out of the pages of Mark Twain. He was skinny and wore Huck Finn overalls and played in the woods and fished in the ocean. Being a fisherman was what introduced him to the issue of plastic pollution. “When we’d clean fish we’d see all this plastic. Fishing is slow paced and we’d talk about everything under the sun, including this problem, but we were kids and at the time we decided it was probably okay.” But as Sam grew older, he knew that this new wonder material called plastic manifesting in the guts of fish and in the ocean waves was far from okay. Growing up during the synthetic renaissance, he watched the paradigm shift towards plastics for packaging and products and how that shift ultimately affected his home beach.

Starting his political career, Sam was already fully aware of the plastic litter problem, but not yet versed on its human health impacts. As he says, “the plastic industry has not been required to disclose the harmful affects of plastic on people. I’m obsessed with the chemical invasion of our bodies and my personal and policy concern came out of understanding this aspect of the problem.”

But understanding a problem and implementing policy are two very different things. As he admits, there exists a significant national force that maintains: “plastic and chemistry make your life better and this has invaded our subconscious to believe that there is no other choice, and that plastic makes everything better.”

Sam knows the pollution firsthand; he’s personally toured his city’s sewer system which demonstrated that aside from the litter and pollution issues, plastic bags represent a significant cost to cleanup for a city; a key argument for getting policymakers engaged.

Of course, Sam understands that the plastic pollution issue goes way beyond plastic bags, but sees a bag ban as part of the practical first steps toward educating the public to avoid unnecessary packaging and motivating the public to bring their own reusable bag. “Plastic bags are the indicator species of this issue. Does it really diminish our quality of life to carry something else?" Oregon, like Washington, has a ballot referral process whereby special interest can organize around a city ordinance by gathering signatures to refer that ordinance to the ballot. Seattle, for example, passed a bag fee that was ultimately defeated by voters after the American Chemistry Council injected hundreds of thousands of dollars into the measure, characterizing the fee to voters as a new tax, aggressively targeting low income citizens and seniors, without mentioning the environmental issue to which the ordinance was targeting—a political bait and switch. Ironically, the ACC funds several plastic pollution cleanup groups as long as they tow the party line that reduction in plastic consumption isn't the solution and that more recycling is. It's the ultimate ruse, as the ACC is well aware that only 3 percent of plastics worldwide are recycled (at best) and that the market is characterized by supply outweighing demand by a factor of 25. News flash, just because you throw your plastic in a recycling bin does not mean it gets recycled, and the amount of virgin plastics being introduced to the environment is going up, not down. But fighting such a powerful and well funded industry is something Sam and his team say they're well prepared for. As he says, "I’m confident we will pass a ban but I’m being very thoughtful and methodical about it.”

Check the video below that recounts Sam’s sewer system tour and the economic cost of plastic to a municipality.

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up: a conversation with artist Chris Jordan and his experience photographing plastic ingestion by Albatrosses on Midway Atoll.

]]>

 

This is part 11 of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Sam Adams grew up on the beach in Newport, Oregon. At age 46, he’s seen his home beach change significantly and not for the better.  Elected mayor in 2008 after serving as a city commissioner for four years, Sam has upped the sustainability ante in his city’s politics by aggressively working to mitigate Portland's footprint on the environment. He’s known for his approachable style and would most often prefer to be called "Sam" by his constituency, rather than "Mayor Adams."

At his core, Sam is a staunch environmentalist with a strong, personal connection to nature whose childhood experience is something out of the pages of Mark Twain. He was skinny and wore Huck Finn overalls and played in the woods and fished in the ocean. Being a fisherman was what introduced him to the issue of plastic pollution. “When we’d clean fish we’d see all this plastic. Fishing is slow paced and we’d talk about everything under the sun, including this problem, but we were kids and at the time we decided it was probably okay.” But as Sam grew older, he knew that this new wonder material called plastic manifesting in the guts of fish and in the ocean waves was far from okay. Growing up during the synthetic renaissance, he watched the paradigm shift towards plastics for packaging and products and how that shift ultimately affected his home beach.

Starting his political career, Sam was already fully aware of the plastic litter problem, but not yet versed on its human health impacts. As he says, “the plastic industry has not been required to disclose the harmful affects of plastic on people. I’m obsessed with the chemical invasion of our bodies and my personal and policy concern came out of understanding this aspect of the problem.”

But understanding a problem and implementing policy are two very different things. As he admits, there exists a significant national force that maintains: “plastic and chemistry make your life better and this has invaded our subconscious to believe that there is no other choice, and that plastic makes everything better.”

Sam knows the pollution firsthand; he’s personally toured his city’s sewer system which demonstrated that aside from the litter and pollution issues, plastic bags represent a significant cost to cleanup for a city; a key argument for getting policymakers engaged.

Of course, Sam understands that the plastic pollution issue goes way beyond plastic bags, but sees a bag ban as part of the practical first steps toward educating the public to avoid unnecessary packaging and motivating the public to bring their own reusable bag. “Plastic bags are the indicator species of this issue. Does it really diminish our quality of life to carry something else?" Oregon, like Washington, has a ballot referral process whereby special interest can organize around a city ordinance by gathering signatures to refer that ordinance to the ballot. Seattle, for example, passed a bag fee that was ultimately defeated by voters after the American Chemistry Council injected hundreds of thousands of dollars into the measure, characterizing the fee to voters as a new tax, aggressively targeting low income citizens and seniors, without mentioning the environmental issue to which the ordinance was targeting—a political bait and switch. Ironically, the ACC funds several plastic pollution cleanup groups as long as they tow the party line that reduction in plastic consumption isn't the solution and that more recycling is. It's the ultimate ruse, as the ACC is well aware that only 3 percent of plastics worldwide are recycled (at best) and that the market is characterized by supply outweighing demand by a factor of 25. News flash, just because you throw your plastic in a recycling bin does not mean it gets recycled, and the amount of virgin plastics being introduced to the environment is going up, not down. But fighting such a powerful and well funded industry is something Sam and his team say they're well prepared for. As he says, "I’m confident we will pass a ban but I’m being very thoughtful and methodical about it.”

Check the video below that recounts Sam’s sewer system tour and the economic cost of plastic to a municipality.

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up: a conversation with artist Chris Jordan and his experience photographing plastic ingestion by Albatrosses on Midway Atoll.

]]> Stiv Wilson Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Beth Terry Bursts Your Bubble: You're Chewing On Plastic]]> http://www.good.is/post/beth-terry-bursts-your-bubble-you-re-chewing-on-plastic/ http://www.good.is/post/beth-terry-bursts-your-bubble-you-re-chewing-on-plastic/ This is part 10 of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Did you know all chewing gum is made of plastic?  Yup, even the "natural" stuff. If you look at the ingredients, you’ll see poly vinyl acetate listed. This was the discovery of one of Beth Terry’s FakePlasticFish blog readers. Terry researched the claim to death and sure enough, she found it to be true: you’re chewing minty fresh plastic.  

Terry started her blog, FakePlasticFish, in 2007 after reading an interview with Captain Charles Moore on plastic ingestion by albatrosses on Midway Atoll. As she says, “That baby chick full of plastic affected me like no other piece of environmental information had before. Sure, I had seen An Inconvenient Truth, been a member of Sierra Club, seen photos of clubbed seals and stranded polar bears, but for some reason that photo really hit me because the objects inside that bird were everyday things that I use in my life and there was a direct connection between me and what happened to that poor bird.”

Terry’s project gets its name from Radiohead’s song, Fake Plastic Trees, a scathing meditation on the synthetic world we all inhabit. But unlike Tommy Yorke’s sad tale, Terry is all about solutions and personal empowerment on the consumer level. For her part, she consumes almost no plastic and she writes nearly every day on how you too can lead a plastic free life. From making her own cat food to avoid BPA lined catfood cans to ordering toilet paper online to avoid the multi-pack plastic wrap, Terry practices what she preaches and finds creative, convenient solutions to plastic dilemmas. “I think people want to know what they can do. That’s why I do what I do—because everything has gone to shit, and people get overwhelmed and lost—If we don’t try we won’t fix anything, we just won’t.”

Ultimately, the blog started as a personal exploration into Terry’s own habits as a way to track her own plastic footprint. Soon, it grew into a full scale project and as her scope grew, so did her readership.  “Every time I feel I get to the point that I’m going to repeat myself or I’ve exhausted this subject, I learn something new—like the chewing gum thing. So I keep going.”  

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up: Next up Portland Mayor Sam Adams on the cost of plastic to the average taxpayer

]]> This is part 10 of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Did you know all chewing gum is made of plastic?  Yup, even the "natural" stuff. If you look at the ingredients, you’ll see poly vinyl acetate listed. This was the discovery of one of Beth Terry’s FakePlasticFish blog readers. Terry researched the claim to death and sure enough, she found it to be true: you’re chewing minty fresh plastic.  

Terry started her blog, FakePlasticFish, in 2007 after reading an interview with Captain Charles Moore on plastic ingestion by albatrosses on Midway Atoll. As she says, “That baby chick full of plastic affected me like no other piece of environmental information had before. Sure, I had seen An Inconvenient Truth, been a member of Sierra Club, seen photos of clubbed seals and stranded polar bears, but for some reason that photo really hit me because the objects inside that bird were everyday things that I use in my life and there was a direct connection between me and what happened to that poor bird.”

Terry’s project gets its name from Radiohead’s song, Fake Plastic Trees, a scathing meditation on the synthetic world we all inhabit. But unlike Tommy Yorke’s sad tale, Terry is all about solutions and personal empowerment on the consumer level. For her part, she consumes almost no plastic and she writes nearly every day on how you too can lead a plastic free life. From making her own cat food to avoid BPA lined catfood cans to ordering toilet paper online to avoid the multi-pack plastic wrap, Terry practices what she preaches and finds creative, convenient solutions to plastic dilemmas. “I think people want to know what they can do. That’s why I do what I do—because everything has gone to shit, and people get overwhelmed and lost—If we don’t try we won’t fix anything, we just won’t.”

Ultimately, the blog started as a personal exploration into Terry’s own habits as a way to track her own plastic footprint. Soon, it grew into a full scale project and as her scope grew, so did her readership.  “Every time I feel I get to the point that I’m going to repeat myself or I’ve exhausted this subject, I learn something new—like the chewing gum thing. So I keep going.”  

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up: Next up Portland Mayor Sam Adams on the cost of plastic to the average taxpayer

]]> Stiv Wilson Wed, 9 Jun 2010 08:00:00 PDT <![CDATA[One Beach, One Year: A Trashy Love Story]]> http://www.good.is/post/one-beach-one-year-a-trashy-love-story/ http://www.good.is/post/one-beach-one-year-a-trashy-love-story/ This is part nine of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang met on the beach: Two artists, from two different walks of life, find each other collecting plastic flotsam on California’s Kehoe Beach over a decade ago. As if it's fated, they fall in love.

Visiting with them at their house, which doubles as a studio, I’m blown away by there beach plastic collection. Typically, beach plastic nerds have big, nasty piles all over the place—but not the Langs. It’s like a curiosity shop of garbage organized in jars and displayed with a curator’s eye. As I survey all the stuff they've collected, Richard pulls a little flat plastic stick from a pile and asks me if I know what it is.

At first, I’m puzzled, but then it dawns on me: "It’s one of those little cheese spreader thingies for those Kraft cheese and cracker snack packs." Richard smiles. They have piles of them. Piles. It's bizarre to think that this one distinct plastic item is so prevalent in the ocean that one could have a collection of them. After spending a month talking about dead birds and poisoned oceans, I find this little plastic cheese spreader particularly despairing.

Judith pulls out a plastic toy identification guide from the 1940s. Richard opens to a page and then produces a small toy train and points to its facsimile in the book. It was found on Kehoe Beach, and it’s a an artifact from the North Pacific Gyre: It has probably been circulating there for nearly 70 years and it remains remarkably intact. “It’s been a particularly productive spring for old plastic,” says Richard.

What’s important understand about oceanic gyres is that they move around a bit, sort of mysteriously, depending on wind patterns and other seasonal variations. It's currently being posited that a dominant westerly flow for the past six months has been pushing the garbage patch up against North America and that that's why we're finding all sorts of decades-old plastic on the beach.  

As we arrive at Kehoe Beach, I watch Richard and Judith. Until now, I’ve looked at beach garbage as nothing more than trash. But they teach me plastic taxonomy, synthetic aesthetics. Judith produces a black tube-like piece of plastic about the size of a pen. It comes from the oyster industry, used to space them in beds. They show me a part of shotgun shell that holds BBs, probably a bullet casing ejected for bird hunting in an estuary that flowed out to sea.

But no matter how interpret this experience, one thing remains—Kehoe is trashed. It’s still overwhelming; it still hurts the soul. On the ride back Richard asks me, “What did you see?” I tell him about how I’ve begun to look at beach plastic differently after looking at it with him and Judith, but that I still feel pain from seeing such ugliness everywhere.

“The opposite of beauty is not ugliness," he says, "it’s indifference. And an artist is never indifferent.”  I nod. Because that's what we're fighting here: indifference. 

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up: did you know all chewing gum is made of plastic?  Learn about Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish and her mission to teach the world how to eliminate plastic from one's life.
 

]]> This is part nine of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang met on the beach: Two artists, from two different walks of life, find each other collecting plastic flotsam on California’s Kehoe Beach over a decade ago. As if it's fated, they fall in love.

Visiting with them at their house, which doubles as a studio, I’m blown away by there beach plastic collection. Typically, beach plastic nerds have big, nasty piles all over the place—but not the Langs. It’s like a curiosity shop of garbage organized in jars and displayed with a curator’s eye. As I survey all the stuff they've collected, Richard pulls a little flat plastic stick from a pile and asks me if I know what it is.

At first, I’m puzzled, but then it dawns on me: "It’s one of those little cheese spreader thingies for those Kraft cheese and cracker snack packs." Richard smiles. They have piles of them. Piles. It's bizarre to think that this one distinct plastic item is so prevalent in the ocean that one could have a collection of them. After spending a month talking about dead birds and poisoned oceans, I find this little plastic cheese spreader particularly despairing.

Judith pulls out a plastic toy identification guide from the 1940s. Richard opens to a page and then produces a small toy train and points to its facsimile in the book. It was found on Kehoe Beach, and it’s a an artifact from the North Pacific Gyre: It has probably been circulating there for nearly 70 years and it remains remarkably intact. “It’s been a particularly productive spring for old plastic,” says Richard.

What’s important understand about oceanic gyres is that they move around a bit, sort of mysteriously, depending on wind patterns and other seasonal variations. It's currently being posited that a dominant westerly flow for the past six months has been pushing the garbage patch up against North America and that that's why we're finding all sorts of decades-old plastic on the beach.  

As we arrive at Kehoe Beach, I watch Richard and Judith. Until now, I’ve looked at beach garbage as nothing more than trash. But they teach me plastic taxonomy, synthetic aesthetics. Judith produces a black tube-like piece of plastic about the size of a pen. It comes from the oyster industry, used to space them in beds. They show me a part of shotgun shell that holds BBs, probably a bullet casing ejected for bird hunting in an estuary that flowed out to sea.

But no matter how interpret this experience, one thing remains—Kehoe is trashed. It’s still overwhelming; it still hurts the soul. On the ride back Richard asks me, “What did you see?” I tell him about how I’ve begun to look at beach plastic differently after looking at it with him and Judith, but that I still feel pain from seeing such ugliness everywhere.

“The opposite of beauty is not ugliness," he says, "it’s indifference. And an artist is never indifferent.”  I nod. Because that's what we're fighting here: indifference. 

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up: did you know all chewing gum is made of plastic?  Learn about Beth Terry of Fake Plastic Fish and her mission to teach the world how to eliminate plastic from one's life.
 

]]> Stiv Wilson Wed, 26 May 2010 09:00:00 PDT <![CDATA[Ocean Exploration and Fatherhood in the Age of Plastic]]> http://www.good.is/post/ocean-exploration-and-fatherhood-in-the-age-of-plastic/ http://www.good.is/post/ocean-exploration-and-fatherhood-in-the-age-of-plastic/ This is part eight of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

I’m heading north, happy to be leaving the traffic of Southern California. I'm on my way to the country—old California, where the Malloy family has been living off the land for decades. Chris Malloy, one of the most decorated pro surfers in the industry, has invited me up to his family’s ranch outside of Lompoc. I arrive to find Chris outside of his barn. He invites me to sit in a chair. The chair is sketchy—it's canvas and looks like it has been baking in the sun for eons—and as I sit, my butt breaks right through it. Chris laughs and apologizes. The moment is perfect.

Far from the stereotypical surf bro, Chris is stoic and speaks eloquently about life, family, and the nature of travel—and the fact that plastic has always beaten him to wherever he’s going. Chris is part owner of and director of Woodshed films and speaks about landscapes in a way that only directors do. Beyond just the pollution aspect, one can tell that Chris has an aesthetic problem with plastic. I almost hear him thinking, "Plastic messes up the shot."

“There’s a magical island in Indonesia we visited that was covered with plastic and we all decided to clean it up," he says. "Feeling good about ourselves that day, we woke up the next morning to find it had all been replaced with the tide. My greatest fear has already happened. There’s already enough out there to trash the entire planet and the population is just growing and people just keep buying it. It’s only going to get worse.”

Chris tells me about his early days traveling and how he's seen the problem compound for more than a decade. “Humans are sheep," he says, "and if there are young people out there living an inspiring life ... that returns to the old way of living ... it will make a difference. People who live in a big cities are looking for green techno fixes for everything and are pissed off about everything—I think they’re full of shit. Everyone functioned before cell phones and eco-everything and now all this technology has brought us to here. All of the sudden we’re looking to fix everything in a green way, but technology is what screwed up everything in the first place. I say that humbly, but I find ways to be less dependent on modern quick fixes. We’re in this current green fad and there are a lot of big companies jumping on the bandwagon. But no matter how much we make people aware, the only hope is getting big industry to change the way they produce. There is no away.”

From around the barn, Chris’s wife Carla approaches with their young child in tow. She’s headed for the chicken coup to gather eggs. It gets me to thinking...what does Chris think about being a father in the synthetic beach era? An era where that child will never see a beach without plastic?  Check the video below for his revelations. Next up in the series is bay area plastic artists Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang.

]]> This is part eight of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

I’m heading north, happy to be leaving the traffic of Southern California. I'm on my way to the country—old California, where the Malloy family has been living off the land for decades. Chris Malloy, one of the most decorated pro surfers in the industry, has invited me up to his family’s ranch outside of Lompoc. I arrive to find Chris outside of his barn. He invites me to sit in a chair. The chair is sketchy—it's canvas and looks like it has been baking in the sun for eons—and as I sit, my butt breaks right through it. Chris laughs and apologizes. The moment is perfect.

Far from the stereotypical surf bro, Chris is stoic and speaks eloquently about life, family, and the nature of travel—and the fact that plastic has always beaten him to wherever he’s going. Chris is part owner of and director of Woodshed films and speaks about landscapes in a way that only directors do. Beyond just the pollution aspect, one can tell that Chris has an aesthetic problem with plastic. I almost hear him thinking, "Plastic messes up the shot."

“There’s a magical island in Indonesia we visited that was covered with plastic and we all decided to clean it up," he says. "Feeling good about ourselves that day, we woke up the next morning to find it had all been replaced with the tide. My greatest fear has already happened. There’s already enough out there to trash the entire planet and the population is just growing and people just keep buying it. It’s only going to get worse.”

Chris tells me about his early days traveling and how he's seen the problem compound for more than a decade. “Humans are sheep," he says, "and if there are young people out there living an inspiring life ... that returns to the old way of living ... it will make a difference. People who live in a big cities are looking for green techno fixes for everything and are pissed off about everything—I think they’re full of shit. Everyone functioned before cell phones and eco-everything and now all this technology has brought us to here. All of the sudden we’re looking to fix everything in a green way, but technology is what screwed up everything in the first place. I say that humbly, but I find ways to be less dependent on modern quick fixes. We’re in this current green fad and there are a lot of big companies jumping on the bandwagon. But no matter how much we make people aware, the only hope is getting big industry to change the way they produce. There is no away.”

From around the barn, Chris’s wife Carla approaches with their young child in tow. She’s headed for the chicken coup to gather eggs. It gets me to thinking...what does Chris think about being a father in the synthetic beach era? An era where that child will never see a beach without plastic?  Check the video below for his revelations. Next up in the series is bay area plastic artists Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang.

]]> Stiv Wilson Tue, 18 May 2010 10:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[ Teenage Waste Fans Part Two: Los Angeles's Environmental Charter School]]> http://www.good.is/post/teenage-waste-fans-part-two-los-angeles-s-environmental-charter-school/ http://www.good.is/post/teenage-waste-fans-part-two-los-angeles-s-environmental-charter-school/ This is part seven of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

The campus of South Los Angeles’s Environmental Charter school in Lawndale was all abuzz when I visited. A Whitehouse film crew was present to document ECHS’s bid to win President Obama’s "Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge." The winner got Barack himself to give this year’s commencement speech. Though ECS didn’t win, I was blown away by what this school had created in this low income part of Los Angeles. The campus itself is much more like a college campus, but with one main difference: It’s a living, breathing, beautiful environment created by its students. Dirty concrete was ripped up and rearranged to create an aesthetically pleasing amphitheatre. Plants are lush, food is grown for student meals, rainwater is captured and filtered through an urban wetland, and amidst the neighborhood’s jungle, the ECHS is an oasis of purity. The curriculum here too is different: ECHS extends learning beyond the classroom. Students do community service, participate in service learning projects, attend outdoor education field trips, and are encouraged to take internships. In short, the kids here are encouraged to think about and engage with the world around them. With a 97 percent attendance rate and a 92 percent college placement rate, it’s fair to say the ECHS is working.

About two years ago, then high school junior Jordan Howard contacted The Surfrider Foundation about how to fight plastic pollution. She’d learned about The North Pacific Gyre and after working closely with Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Jordan wanted to see what her school could do. With the help of the activist Lindsey Jurca, Howard trained the students on the ills of plastic pollution. They met every week to conduct confidence workshops in order to get other students comfortable with public speaking on the issue. After they perfected the message, the students hit the streets and have since trained other students at other schools and have become an important force in the fight against plastic pollution.

During my visit, I had the chance to watch two students give a plastic presentation to their classmates.  What struck me was their passion for the issue and how erudite they were on the particular chemistry and harmful effects of plastic in the marine environment and its implications for the human food chain. What left me in awe was the students selfless dedication to a global understanding. Given the tremendous challenges that low income families are often faced with, the lives of sea turtles and entangled whales often don’t take precedent. But not so at the ECHS; it's a true triumph and frankly, ECHS remains one of the most inspiring places I witnessed on the entire outreach trip. Jordan has ultimately passed the plastic torch on to Rudy Sanchez, as she prepares to graduate and go off to college. Check Sanchez’s short video below on his team’s outreach efforts.



Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up in the series is pro surfer/ocean explorer Chris Malloy on being in some of the remotest places on earth and finding that plastic always beats him there.


 

]]> This is part seven of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

The campus of South Los Angeles’s Environmental Charter school in Lawndale was all abuzz when I visited. A Whitehouse film crew was present to document ECHS’s bid to win President Obama’s "Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge." The winner got Barack himself to give this year’s commencement speech. Though ECS didn’t win, I was blown away by what this school had created in this low income part of Los Angeles. The campus itself is much more like a college campus, but with one main difference: It’s a living, breathing, beautiful environment created by its students. Dirty concrete was ripped up and rearranged to create an aesthetically pleasing amphitheatre. Plants are lush, food is grown for student meals, rainwater is captured and filtered through an urban wetland, and amidst the neighborhood’s jungle, the ECHS is an oasis of purity. The curriculum here too is different: ECHS extends learning beyond the classroom. Students do community service, participate in service learning projects, attend outdoor education field trips, and are encouraged to take internships. In short, the kids here are encouraged to think about and engage with the world around them. With a 97 percent attendance rate and a 92 percent college placement rate, it’s fair to say the ECHS is working.

About two years ago, then high school junior Jordan Howard contacted The Surfrider Foundation about how to fight plastic pollution. She’d learned about The North Pacific Gyre and after working closely with Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Jordan wanted to see what her school could do. With the help of the activist Lindsey Jurca, Howard trained the students on the ills of plastic pollution. They met every week to conduct confidence workshops in order to get other students comfortable with public speaking on the issue. After they perfected the message, the students hit the streets and have since trained other students at other schools and have become an important force in the fight against plastic pollution.

During my visit, I had the chance to watch two students give a plastic presentation to their classmates.  What struck me was their passion for the issue and how erudite they were on the particular chemistry and harmful effects of plastic in the marine environment and its implications for the human food chain. What left me in awe was the students selfless dedication to a global understanding. Given the tremendous challenges that low income families are often faced with, the lives of sea turtles and entangled whales often don’t take precedent. But not so at the ECHS; it's a true triumph and frankly, ECHS remains one of the most inspiring places I witnessed on the entire outreach trip. Jordan has ultimately passed the plastic torch on to Rudy Sanchez, as she prepares to graduate and go off to college. Check Sanchez’s short video below on his team’s outreach efforts.



Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up in the series is pro surfer/ocean explorer Chris Malloy on being in some of the remotest places on earth and finding that plastic always beats him there.


 

]]> Stiv Wilson Wed, 12 May 2010 12:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Teenage Waste Fans, Part One: Santa Monica’s Team Marine]]> http://www.good.is/post/teenage-waste-fans-part-one-santa-monica-s-team-marine/ http://www.good.is/post/teenage-waste-fans-part-one-santa-monica-s-team-marine/ This is part six of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Traveling 4,000 miles to look at plastic garbage on the beach everywhere can be hard on the senses.  Yeah, the problem is really, really bad. It’s overwhelming and somewhere right now an albatross is dying because someone littered a plastic bottle cap or a plastic lighter. How does one find some hope, especially when the exponent on ocean trash is growing? Answer: Learn from our children.

Jacob Hassett, Raphael Mawrence, Vallerie Whacker, and Kou Collins are some of the already distinguished members of the Team Marine movement. Team marine is a grassroots, student-run organization that looks at ocean issues at their core and offers solutions to battle the problem. Their main initiative focuses on plastic pollution and the group does outreach, education, cleanup, new media presentations, and even lobbies for better policy. They’ve developed a mantra: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Research, Re-educate, Reinvest, Refuel, Regrow, and Rethink. Commenting on the inadequacy of the three R model, Hasset says, “It’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle on steroids and meant to look at every aspect of the problem.”  

I met Team Marine at their home beach in Santa Monica while conducting a beach cleanup. What I found was inspiring: These kids actually wanted to be here, it wasn’t just some after school requirement. They don’t just pick up trash, they investigate and quantify it to better understand what kinds of plastic garbage are most prevalent—data which is useful when looking at what kinds of consumer products have the greatest impact on our oceans and how best to target pollution sources in campaigns. As we sit on a life guard stand after the cleanup, I ask the four about their fears and what they perceive to be the problem. Each kid enumerated valid concerns about consumer habits, corporate greed, and the usual laundry list of societal ills, but what resounded was a feeling of being confounded. They’re not naïve, but they simply can’t understand why so many people behave the way they do, especially when confronted with the ill that behavior causes. This point, I think, is where many activists lose their ambition. In the real world, logic and truth don’t necessarily win. The kids understand this, but they don’t see the future with cynical eyes; they see the future as one of their own making. "Eventually we will take over,” Whacker says with Obama-like confidence.

I believe them already—the body of work Team Marine has created is impressive, rivaling many well funded nonprofits even though their organization is entirely student-based. Mawrence, with the help of his teammates, created a 14-minute film (called "The 10 R’s") that’s better than much of the work that more established groups use for their outreach and education. Besides beach cleanups and film making, Collins tells me that they develop course curriculum for other schools and train other students on the issue. Hassett is proud of their accomplishments thus far, “We have been written up in over 150 newspapers, have been on Nickelodeon, and have ultimately reached nine million people.” Not bad for a bunch of kids, most of whom can’t even vote yet. Check out Team Marine’s film and a whole list of accolades at their website, teammarine.org.

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next, Teenage WasteFans Part two: LA's Environmental Charter School.

 

]]> This is part six of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

Traveling 4,000 miles to look at plastic garbage on the beach everywhere can be hard on the senses.  Yeah, the problem is really, really bad. It’s overwhelming and somewhere right now an albatross is dying because someone littered a plastic bottle cap or a plastic lighter. How does one find some hope, especially when the exponent on ocean trash is growing? Answer: Learn from our children.

Jacob Hassett, Raphael Mawrence, Vallerie Whacker, and Kou Collins are some of the already distinguished members of the Team Marine movement. Team marine is a grassroots, student-run organization that looks at ocean issues at their core and offers solutions to battle the problem. Their main initiative focuses on plastic pollution and the group does outreach, education, cleanup, new media presentations, and even lobbies for better policy. They’ve developed a mantra: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Research, Re-educate, Reinvest, Refuel, Regrow, and Rethink. Commenting on the inadequacy of the three R model, Hasset says, “It’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle on steroids and meant to look at every aspect of the problem.”  

I met Team Marine at their home beach in Santa Monica while conducting a beach cleanup. What I found was inspiring: These kids actually wanted to be here, it wasn’t just some after school requirement. They don’t just pick up trash, they investigate and quantify it to better understand what kinds of plastic garbage are most prevalent—data which is useful when looking at what kinds of consumer products have the greatest impact on our oceans and how best to target pollution sources in campaigns. As we sit on a life guard stand after the cleanup, I ask the four about their fears and what they perceive to be the problem. Each kid enumerated valid concerns about consumer habits, corporate greed, and the usual laundry list of societal ills, but what resounded was a feeling of being confounded. They’re not naïve, but they simply can’t understand why so many people behave the way they do, especially when confronted with the ill that behavior causes. This point, I think, is where many activists lose their ambition. In the real world, logic and truth don’t necessarily win. The kids understand this, but they don’t see the future with cynical eyes; they see the future as one of their own making. "Eventually we will take over,” Whacker says with Obama-like confidence.

I believe them already—the body of work Team Marine has created is impressive, rivaling many well funded nonprofits even though their organization is entirely student-based. Mawrence, with the help of his teammates, created a 14-minute film (called "The 10 R’s") that’s better than much of the work that more established groups use for their outreach and education. Besides beach cleanups and film making, Collins tells me that they develop course curriculum for other schools and train other students on the issue. Hassett is proud of their accomplishments thus far, “We have been written up in over 150 newspapers, have been on Nickelodeon, and have ultimately reached nine million people.” Not bad for a bunch of kids, most of whom can’t even vote yet. Check out Team Marine’s film and a whole list of accolades at their website, teammarine.org.

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next, Teenage WasteFans Part two: LA's Environmental Charter School.

 

]]> Stiv Wilson Fri, 7 May 2010 11:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Plastic Is Pollution: The Making of an Artist Turned Activist]]> http://www.good.is/post/plastic-is-pollution-the-making-of-an-artist-turned-activist/ http://www.good.is/post/plastic-is-pollution-the-making-of-an-artist-turned-activist/
This is part five of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

“I don’t eat fish anymore, not after what I saw sailing across the Atlantic,” I say as a beautiful plate of seared Halibut passes by me.

“I don’t blame you,” says Dianna Cohen, who is sitting next to me at a dinner party in Santa Monica, California. The party is a farewell dinner hosted by 5 Gyres principles Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins. We are celebrating Roz Savage, the U.N. Climate Change Hero who rowed across the Atlantic and is currently finishing a similar jaunt across the Pacific. Like all of us at the table, Roz is doing what she can to get the good word out on the marine eco-disaster that the media quaintly refers to as "the Texas-sized garbage patch."

Over dinner, we talk about the human health impact of plastic pollution in the ocean: Plastic in the ocean works like a sponge for what are known as POPs (persistent organic pollutants like PCBs and DDT) and its believed by everyone here that these chemicals transfer to the fish's tissue after ingestion. As fish's main predators now, human are might be taking those POPs in as well.

“Yes, it’s a bummer—like any pseudo-cosmo-bohemian type, I love sushi, but I just can’t bring myself to eat it anymore,” I say. Dianna’s bows her head sadly and her magnificent dirty blonde curls envelop her face. She knows what I know. And she also knows that the vast majority of people in the world don’t know what we do. And that’s precisely why Dianna has dedicated her life to doing what she does.  

Cohen is the cofounder of The Plastic Pollution Coalition, a privately funded umbrella organization for scientists, artists, activists, bloggers, and researchers working on marine plastic issues and land-based solutions. The goal of the PPC is to build a coalition and use its marketing acumen to bring big attention to the work of all its coalition members. By nature, Dianna is an intensely passionate woman; fighting the good fight is what she’s built for. A networker by nature, she has infiltrated the ranks of the Los Angeles celebrity elite and enlisted many high-profile agents to her cause. It's her hope that a little stardom might help educate the masses on the horror that a plastic fork may wreak on our environment.

As an artist, Dianna has been making work out of plastic for the better part of 20 years. At the recent TED conference in the Galapagos—part of Sylvia Earle's Mission Blue TED wish—she spoke about using art as a tool for change. “It’s a beautiful way to get people thinking about the material in a different way," she says, "and confront them with its nature: intended obsolescence.”

The next day, I visit her studio in Los Anegles and she shows me some of her work. “The funny thing about the artwork I make is that now people are saying it’s very ‘prescient.’ It’s odd because I’ve been making this forever and all of the sudden it’s in vogue.”

Her work brought her into activism with the initial goal we all like to think is possible: “We’ve got to go out and clean this thing up.” She even went so far as to try to raise money to hire industrual equipment for the project, only to learn along the way that it's basically an impossible thing to do.

Cohen borrows from the analogy that Captain Charles Moore of Algalita Marine Research Foundation often uses: “It’s like a bathtub that’s being filled much faster than it can be drained; by the time you’ve pulled one container ship out of the ocean, hundreds more loads of plastic garbage have entered.  The solution to this problem is land based.”

Check out the video below of Dianna describing her journey from artist to eco-warrior.



Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up in the series is an incredibly inspiring view into the next generation of plastic pollution fighters at the Environmental Charter School in south Los Angeles and the wonderful work of the Santa Monica High School activists, Team Marine.

]]>
This is part five of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here.

“I don’t eat fish anymore, not after what I saw sailing across the Atlantic,” I say as a beautiful plate of seared Halibut passes by me.

“I don’t blame you,” says Dianna Cohen, who is sitting next to me at a dinner party in Santa Monica, California. The party is a farewell dinner hosted by 5 Gyres principles Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins. We are celebrating Roz Savage, the U.N. Climate Change Hero who rowed across the Atlantic and is currently finishing a similar jaunt across the Pacific. Like all of us at the table, Roz is doing what she can to get the good word out on the marine eco-disaster that the media quaintly refers to as "the Texas-sized garbage patch."

Over dinner, we talk about the human health impact of plastic pollution in the ocean: Plastic in the ocean works like a sponge for what are known as POPs (persistent organic pollutants like PCBs and DDT) and its believed by everyone here that these chemicals transfer to the fish's tissue after ingestion. As fish's main predators now, human are might be taking those POPs in as well.

“Yes, it’s a bummer—like any pseudo-cosmo-bohemian type, I love sushi, but I just can’t bring myself to eat it anymore,” I say. Dianna’s bows her head sadly and her magnificent dirty blonde curls envelop her face. She knows what I know. And she also knows that the vast majority of people in the world don’t know what we do. And that’s precisely why Dianna has dedicated her life to doing what she does.  

Cohen is the cofounder of The Plastic Pollution Coalition, a privately funded umbrella organization for scientists, artists, activists, bloggers, and researchers working on marine plastic issues and land-based solutions. The goal of the PPC is to build a coalition and use its marketing acumen to bring big attention to the work of all its coalition members. By nature, Dianna is an intensely passionate woman; fighting the good fight is what she’s built for. A networker by nature, she has infiltrated the ranks of the Los Angeles celebrity elite and enlisted many high-profile agents to her cause. It's her hope that a little stardom might help educate the masses on the horror that a plastic fork may wreak on our environment.

As an artist, Dianna has been making work out of plastic for the better part of 20 years. At the recent TED conference in the Galapagos—part of Sylvia Earle's Mission Blue TED wish—she spoke about using art as a tool for change. “It’s a beautiful way to get people thinking about the material in a different way," she says, "and confront them with its nature: intended obsolescence.”

The next day, I visit her studio in Los Anegles and she shows me some of her work. “The funny thing about the artwork I make is that now people are saying it’s very ‘prescient.’ It’s odd because I’ve been making this forever and all of the sudden it’s in vogue.”

Her work brought her into activism with the initial goal we all like to think is possible: “We’ve got to go out and clean this thing up.” She even went so far as to try to raise money to hire industrual equipment for the project, only to learn along the way that it's basically an impossible thing to do.

Cohen borrows from the analogy that Captain Charles Moore of Algalita Marine Research Foundation often uses: “It’s like a bathtub that’s being filled much faster than it can be drained; by the time you’ve pulled one container ship out of the ocean, hundreds more loads of plastic garbage have entered.  The solution to this problem is land based.”

Check out the video below of Dianna describing her journey from artist to eco-warrior.



Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up in the series is an incredibly inspiring view into the next generation of plastic pollution fighters at the Environmental Charter School in south Los Angeles and the wonderful work of the Santa Monica High School activists, Team Marine.

]]> Stiv Wilson Mon, 3 May 2010 15:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Ban The Bag: Jim Moriarty, CEO of The Surfrider Foundation, in the Age of Single Use Plastic]]> http://www.good.is/post/ban-the-bag-jim-moriarty-ceo-of-the-surfrider-foundation-in-the-age-of-single-use-plastic/ http://www.good.is/post/ban-the-bag-jim-moriarty-ceo-of-the-surfrider-foundation-in-the-age-of-single-use-plastic/
This is part four of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here, here, and here. 

I met Jim Moriarty, CEO of The Surfrider Foundation, at Surfrider HQ in San Clemente, California. The Surfrider Foundation is a partner to The 5 Gyres Project and has been integral in the fight against plastic pollution. “Our Rise Above Plastics program got its start with activists in the field,” says Moriarty, remembering the beginnings of Surfrider's engagement in plastics issues. "This woman named Ximena Waissbluth from Monterey Bay came to me saying she wanted to travel around the country educating people on the perils of plastic and that she wanted Surfrider to fund it. She wasn't the salesman or pitch type, but I was convinced and really inspired by her passion." Well, his investment worked. Waissbluth came to Portland, Oregon, several years ago with her plastic presentation and scared the crap out of me, personally. It is her, specifically, that got me involved in the issue in the first place.  

At its core, this is how Surfrider works: It's a grassroots organization that supports activists engaging locally all over the world. Because of the ubiquity of plastic on beaches worldwide, interest in plastic issues has spread organically throughout the chapter network. The San Diego Chapter's Scott Harrison was one of the very first Surfriders to work on the issue. It was because of his resoluteness that maritime plastic pollution came to the forefront of Surfrider National's attention. By 2008, Surfrider added their Rise Above Plastics campaign to their national programs. Then, with the branding acumen of Director of Marketing, Matt McClain, the program was packaged for a larger audience and Surfrider began to build a war chest of information, photo assets, Powerpoint presentations, and outreach materials for chapter activists to use when engaging in local campaigns. Currently, the next phase of the Rise Above Plastics program is being revamped for an even larger, more tech savvy audience.

As one of many Surfrider activists, the foundation has been the vehicle by which my Portland Chapter has infiltrated Portland's political elite and brought our Ban The Bag campaign to the forefront of Portland politics, making key partnerships with the mayor’s office to solve the problem. We expect a victory on our Ban The Bag campaign early this summer (fingers crossed).

Surfrider, with more than 50,000 members who are core ocean users worldwide, has been an invaluable ally for creating awareness about the horrors of maritime plastic and has funded activists such as myself to work on the issue (Surfrider gave me a matching grant to sail to the North Atlantic Gyre, earlier this year).

For Moriarty, like any good grassroots organizer, fighting plastic pollution is something that starts at home, “A year ago, my daughter would be ridiculed for bringing reusable containers for her lunch, now all her friends are doing it.” Ever observant of the physical places he fights to protect, Moriarty, an avid surfer, has been witness to the alarming rate by which plastic has infiltrated his home beaches. Check the video below to see his commentary on how one of the greatest surfbreaks in North America is becoming synthetic.  


Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up in the series is artist and writer Dianna Cohen, co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. 

]]>
This is part four of Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the previous installments here, here, and here. 

I met Jim Moriarty, CEO of The Surfrider Foundation, at Surfrider HQ in San Clemente, California. The Surfrider Foundation is a partner to The 5 Gyres Project and has been integral in the fight against plastic pollution. “Our Rise Above Plastics program got its start with activists in the field,” says Moriarty, remembering the beginnings of Surfrider's engagement in plastics issues. "This woman named Ximena Waissbluth from Monterey Bay came to me saying she wanted to travel around the country educating people on the perils of plastic and that she wanted Surfrider to fund it. She wasn't the salesman or pitch type, but I was convinced and really inspired by her passion." Well, his investment worked. Waissbluth came to Portland, Oregon, several years ago with her plastic presentation and scared the crap out of me, personally. It is her, specifically, that got me involved in the issue in the first place.  

At its core, this is how Surfrider works: It's a grassroots organization that supports activists engaging locally all over the world. Because of the ubiquity of plastic on beaches worldwide, interest in plastic issues has spread organically throughout the chapter network. The San Diego Chapter's Scott Harrison was one of the very first Surfriders to work on the issue. It was because of his resoluteness that maritime plastic pollution came to the forefront of Surfrider National's attention. By 2008, Surfrider added their Rise Above Plastics campaign to their national programs. Then, with the branding acumen of Director of Marketing, Matt McClain, the program was packaged for a larger audience and Surfrider began to build a war chest of information, photo assets, Powerpoint presentations, and outreach materials for chapter activists to use when engaging in local campaigns. Currently, the next phase of the Rise Above Plastics program is being revamped for an even larger, more tech savvy audience.

As one of many Surfrider activists, the foundation has been the vehicle by which my Portland Chapter has infiltrated Portland's political elite and brought our Ban The Bag campaign to the forefront of Portland politics, making key partnerships with the mayor’s office to solve the problem. We expect a victory on our Ban The Bag campaign early this summer (fingers crossed).

Surfrider, with more than 50,000 members who are core ocean users worldwide, has been an invaluable ally for creating awareness about the horrors of maritime plastic and has funded activists such as myself to work on the issue (Surfrider gave me a matching grant to sail to the North Atlantic Gyre, earlier this year).

For Moriarty, like any good grassroots organizer, fighting plastic pollution is something that starts at home, “A year ago, my daughter would be ridiculed for bringing reusable containers for her lunch, now all her friends are doing it.” Ever observant of the physical places he fights to protect, Moriarty, an avid surfer, has been witness to the alarming rate by which plastic has infiltrated his home beaches. Check the video below to see his commentary on how one of the greatest surfbreaks in North America is becoming synthetic.  


Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Next up in the series is artist and writer Dianna Cohen, co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. 

]]> Stiv Wilson Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Ocean Minders: An Interview with Pro Surfers Mary Osborne and Jennifer Flannigan]]> http://www.good.is/post/ocean-minders-an-interview-with-pro-surfers-mary-osborne-and-jennifer-flannigan/ http://www.good.is/post/ocean-minders-an-interview-with-pro-surfers-mary-osborne-and-jennifer-flannigan/ This is part three Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the first and second installment here and here.

As I drive down Highway 101, I’m passing world-famous surf break after world-famous surf break. I'm in Southern California to surf and meet up with some other environmentalist surfers that I've been in email contact with for ages but have never officially met. I stop at Rincon, one of the best righthander waves in the world. I don’t paddle out because I have to meet pro surfer Mary Osborne just down the road, but I take stock of the state of synthetics on the shore. Among the rocks, I see what I have come to expect: tons of plastic debris, everywhere I look.

Mary was born and raised in Ventura and though she travels a lot, she always seems to come back. Ventura is home and it’s the small town feel of it that Mary both likes and despises. She can’t go anywhere without seeing someone she knows which is both a blessing and a curse. What keeps her here is family and an amazing array of really good waves. But over time, she’s watched the area change dramatically, seeing more and more garbage on the beaches, and more pollution in general. As a Patagonia Ambassador, Mary travels quite a bit and has seen first-hand how plastic has begun to dominate beaches worldwide: From Indonesia to Taiwan to Mexico, she says, the beaches are trashed. “People always say, ‘You’re so lucky to be able to visit all these tropical paradises,’" she tells me, "and yes, I feel fortunate, but then I’m like—really, they’re not actually that pretty anymore.”

This sentiment strikes a chord. We talk about the good old times when plastic wasn’t everywhere, and about how we might be the last generation to remember beaches the way we all like them: pristine. She tells me a story about a recent trip the the Bahamas. Tourist destinations like the Bahamas have a dirty secret: They hide their plastic pollution. “I road a bike around the island and the tourist areas are all clean like the postcards, but once you get away from them, you see the garbage. Plastic garbage everywhere and all you smell is burning plastic. I don't blame the locals for burning it because what else are they going to do with it? It's not like they have a system for dealing with so much plastic." Mary has made sincere efforts to curb her consumption of single use plastics and adds, “The solution to plastic in the ocean starts at home.”

Down the road in Encinitas, I meet up with another pro-surfer, the writer Jennifer Flannigan. Jennifer grew up in Florida, but has lived in Southern California for five years now. In both places, she’s seen all manner of plastic debris on her home beaches. Like Mary, Jennifer travels for surf photo shoots and has witnessed plastic garbage all over the world. But here, just south of the famous surf break Swami’s, Jennifer shows me a spot where she found the most disgusting plastic object yet—put it this way, it’s something plastic and it’s for personal use in private.

Though plastic pollution is something she sees everywhere, she admits that she’s no expert on the subject. I tell her that few people actually are and that’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing: traveling the coast of the United States and Canada to share my stories of sailing to the center of the ocean and finding the same types plastic garbage out their that litter the beaches here. I hope some the high-profile people I meet along the way will spread the word, too.

I show her two samples taken by the 5 Gyres Project from the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. I like showing people the samples; they always produce a strong reaction and I like to speculate on what’s going on in their heads as they consider these little volumes of sea water taken thousands of miles from land. As she studies the vile I can see the wheels spin in her head. Jennifer is an eloquent speaker and when she articulates a thought she considers what she’s going to say before she says it. Especially when it matters. Her look is one of disbelief and quiet rage as she holds the sample, watching the colorful flecks of plastic spin—a gyre sample looks like a vulgar snow globe.

“The increased individualism and the modern constructs of the globalized society we live in creates more and more consumption and depletes our natural resources for things like packaging," Jennifer says. "Take Japan; everything in Japan is single-use, prepackaged—and it’s this garbage that ends up on the beaches there.” But despite the daunting scale of the plastic pollution problem, Jennifer remains hopeful.

You can hear from her directly in the following video and stay tuned for the next stop on the Beaches, People, and Plastic tour, where we link up with CEO of The Surfrider Foundation, Jim Moriarty.


Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

]]> This is part three Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the first and second installment here and here.

As I drive down Highway 101, I’m passing world-famous surf break after world-famous surf break. I'm in Southern California to surf and meet up with some other environmentalist surfers that I've been in email contact with for ages but have never officially met. I stop at Rincon, one of the best righthander waves in the world. I don’t paddle out because I have to meet pro surfer Mary Osborne just down the road, but I take stock of the state of synthetics on the shore. Among the rocks, I see what I have come to expect: tons of plastic debris, everywhere I look.

Mary was born and raised in Ventura and though she travels a lot, she always seems to come back. Ventura is home and it’s the small town feel of it that Mary both likes and despises. She can’t go anywhere without seeing someone she knows which is both a blessing and a curse. What keeps her here is family and an amazing array of really good waves. But over time, she’s watched the area change dramatically, seeing more and more garbage on the beaches, and more pollution in general. As a Patagonia Ambassador, Mary travels quite a bit and has seen first-hand how plastic has begun to dominate beaches worldwide: From Indonesia to Taiwan to Mexico, she says, the beaches are trashed. “People always say, ‘You’re so lucky to be able to visit all these tropical paradises,’" she tells me, "and yes, I feel fortunate, but then I’m like—really, they’re not actually that pretty anymore.”

This sentiment strikes a chord. We talk about the good old times when plastic wasn’t everywhere, and about how we might be the last generation to remember beaches the way we all like them: pristine. She tells me a story about a recent trip the the Bahamas. Tourist destinations like the Bahamas have a dirty secret: They hide their plastic pollution. “I road a bike around the island and the tourist areas are all clean like the postcards, but once you get away from them, you see the garbage. Plastic garbage everywhere and all you smell is burning plastic. I don't blame the locals for burning it because what else are they going to do with it? It's not like they have a system for dealing with so much plastic." Mary has made sincere efforts to curb her consumption of single use plastics and adds, “The solution to plastic in the ocean starts at home.”

Down the road in Encinitas, I meet up with another pro-surfer, the writer Jennifer Flannigan. Jennifer grew up in Florida, but has lived in Southern California for five years now. In both places, she’s seen all manner of plastic debris on her home beaches. Like Mary, Jennifer travels for surf photo shoots and has witnessed plastic garbage all over the world. But here, just south of the famous surf break Swami’s, Jennifer shows me a spot where she found the most disgusting plastic object yet—put it this way, it’s something plastic and it’s for personal use in private.

Though plastic pollution is something she sees everywhere, she admits that she’s no expert on the subject. I tell her that few people actually are and that’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing: traveling the coast of the United States and Canada to share my stories of sailing to the center of the ocean and finding the same types plastic garbage out their that litter the beaches here. I hope some the high-profile people I meet along the way will spread the word, too.

I show her two samples taken by the 5 Gyres Project from the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. I like showing people the samples; they always produce a strong reaction and I like to speculate on what’s going on in their heads as they consider these little volumes of sea water taken thousands of miles from land. As she studies the vile I can see the wheels spin in her head. Jennifer is an eloquent speaker and when she articulates a thought she considers what she’s going to say before she says it. Especially when it matters. Her look is one of disbelief and quiet rage as she holds the sample, watching the colorful flecks of plastic spin—a gyre sample looks like a vulgar snow globe.

“The increased individualism and the modern constructs of the globalized society we live in creates more and more consumption and depletes our natural resources for things like packaging," Jennifer says. "Take Japan; everything in Japan is single-use, prepackaged—and it’s this garbage that ends up on the beaches there.” But despite the daunting scale of the plastic pollution problem, Jennifer remains hopeful.

You can hear from her directly in the following video and stay tuned for the next stop on the Beaches, People, and Plastic tour, where we link up with CEO of The Surfrider Foundation, Jim Moriarty.


Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

]]> Stiv Wilson Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Talking with Plastic Pollution Fighting Rockstar Charles Moore]]> http://www.good.is/post/talking-with-plastic-pollution-fighting-rockstar-charles-moore/ http://www.good.is/post/talking-with-plastic-pollution-fighting-rockstar-charles-moore/ This is part two Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the first installment here.

I meet Captain Charles Moore in front of his house in Southern California on a sunny afternoon. Across the street is his sailing research vessel, the very boat that has taken several missions to the North Pacific Gyre with him as skipper. It’s because of Charles Moore that you (hopefully) have heard about the enormous garbage patch in the Pacific. From the deck of Moore’s catamaran is where at least half the images you’ve seen of this marine eco-disaster have been taken.

Moore originally discovered the Pacific plastic garbage flotilla in 1997 and despite first attempts at outreach, few paid attention to him. Now, after more than ten years of work the issue is finally getting some traction and he’s making regular appearances on talk shows such as David Letterman's and Stephen Colbert's. If ever there was such a thing as a plastic pollution fighting rockstar, Moore is the front man of the band.

I’m a bit nervous as I step onto Moore's vessel, the Alguita. To me, Charles Moore is a hero. He’s an inspiration. As we begin to talk, I realize that he’s really just an ordinary guy who saw something wrong in the world and is trying to make a an extraordinary difference. Though singularly remarkable, Moore's humility pervades everything thing he says; whenever he talks about the mission, he always uses the pronoun, "we."

Also talking to Moore is a kiwi named Hayden, who is working on plastic issues in New Zealand and as the two talk, I take great delight at Moore’s invitation to  explore his ship. As Hayden and Charlie wrap up their conversation, Moore and I talk about the recent expedition (a collaboration between Algalita and the organizations I work for, 5Gyres) to the Atlantic that I was part of, and later, at the Algalita office I show him pictures of what we found in the Atlantic Garbage Patch. He fixates on them. He's not happy to see it there,  in full color, as well. Then the phone rings. Moore doesn’t typically work in the Algalita office, but he’s happy to put on a headset and play secretary when around. As he talks to the person on the other end of the line he cracks jokes. He’s quick witted. The call is a request for him to speak at some engagement or another. After the call he remarks that he needs an agent because the requests are becoming more and more frequent. I joke that I’m happy I got to him just in time, and he says, “Oh no, that’s a request for a speaking engagement, I’ll always do the interviews.”  

When Moore talks, you listen. He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of plastic issues, oceanography, and polymer chemistry. He's unafraid of the industry lobby that produces this single use garbage, and he's not afraid to call a spade a spade. He's a bull in a special interest china shop. But it's his pragmatism informed by more than a decade of empirical evidence that makes him so resolute. “Humanity's plastic footprint is just as bad if not worse than its carbon footprint. Plastic pollution is as serious or more serious than global warming,” he says, noticing a bunch of floating plastic at the stern of his boat between one pontoon and the dock to which the Alguita is tied. The irony of finding plastic pollution in the ocean across the street from his home sandwiched between the boat and the dock is not lost on either of us and with veiled disgust he utters, “We’ve reached millions, but we need to reach billions.”

Check the video interview of Moore talking about the history of plastic pollution in the Pacific. It’s a bit on the longish side, but it does a great job of explaining the issue in detail.



Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
 

]]> This is part two Stiv Wilson's tour to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean. Read the first installment here.

I meet Captain Charles Moore in front of his house in Southern California on a sunny afternoon. Across the street is his sailing research vessel, the very boat that has taken several missions to the North Pacific Gyre with him as skipper. It’s because of Charles Moore that you (hopefully) have heard about the enormous garbage patch in the Pacific. From the deck of Moore’s catamaran is where at least half the images you’ve seen of this marine eco-disaster have been taken.

Moore originally discovered the Pacific plastic garbage flotilla in 1997 and despite first attempts at outreach, few paid attention to him. Now, after more than ten years of work the issue is finally getting some traction and he’s making regular appearances on talk shows such as David Letterman's and Stephen Colbert's. If ever there was such a thing as a plastic pollution fighting rockstar, Moore is the front man of the band.

I’m a bit nervous as I step onto Moore's vessel, the Alguita. To me, Charles Moore is a hero. He’s an inspiration. As we begin to talk, I realize that he’s really just an ordinary guy who saw something wrong in the world and is trying to make a an extraordinary difference. Though singularly remarkable, Moore's humility pervades everything thing he says; whenever he talks about the mission, he always uses the pronoun, "we."

Also talking to Moore is a kiwi named Hayden, who is working on plastic issues in New Zealand and as the two talk, I take great delight at Moore’s invitation to  explore his ship. As Hayden and Charlie wrap up their conversation, Moore and I talk about the recent expedition (a collaboration between Algalita and the organizations I work for, 5Gyres) to the Atlantic that I was part of, and later, at the Algalita office I show him pictures of what we found in the Atlantic Garbage Patch. He fixates on them. He's not happy to see it there,  in full color, as well. Then the phone rings. Moore doesn’t typically work in the Algalita office, but he’s happy to put on a headset and play secretary when around. As he talks to the person on the other end of the line he cracks jokes. He’s quick witted. The call is a request for him to speak at some engagement or another. After the call he remarks that he needs an agent because the requests are becoming more and more frequent. I joke that I’m happy I got to him just in time, and he says, “Oh no, that’s a request for a speaking engagement, I’ll always do the interviews.”  

When Moore talks, you listen. He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of plastic issues, oceanography, and polymer chemistry. He's unafraid of the industry lobby that produces this single use garbage, and he's not afraid to call a spade a spade. He's a bull in a special interest china shop. But it's his pragmatism informed by more than a decade of empirical evidence that makes him so resolute. “Humanity's plastic footprint is just as bad if not worse than its carbon footprint. Plastic pollution is as serious or more serious than global warming,” he says, noticing a bunch of floating plastic at the stern of his boat between one pontoon and the dock to which the Alguita is tied. The irony of finding plastic pollution in the ocean across the street from his home sandwiched between the boat and the dock is not lost on either of us and with veiled disgust he utters, “We’ve reached millions, but we need to reach billions.”

Check the video interview of Moore talking about the history of plastic pollution in the Pacific. It’s a bit on the longish side, but it does a great job of explaining the issue in detail.



Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
 

]]> Stiv Wilson Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:30:00 PDT <![CDATA[Taking a Trip to Better Understand the Floating Piles of Garbage in Our Oceans ]]> http://www.good.is/post/taking-a-trip-to-better-understand-the-floating-piles-of-garbage-in-our-oceans/ http://www.good.is/post/taking-a-trip-to-better-understand-the-floating-piles-of-garbage-in-our-oceans/ The writer and environmentalist Stiv Wilson is on a mission to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean, and what he—and the rest of us—can do about it.

As a surfer, I've always been interested in the ocean's health. Several years ago I started noticing that no matter where I traveled one thing remained the same: Our world's beaches are covered with plastic debris. I've been to beaches in Nicaragua that are knee deep in plastic bottles, beaches in Canada where ground plastic is as ubiquitous as grains of sand. Understanding that plastic in the ocean doesn't biodegrade, I was alarmed. That alarm ultimately put me on a course that would change my life forever.

I read everything I could find on the subject. I combed through websites like Algalita.org whose founder, Captain Charles Moore, discovered The North Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997. Moore's research has been invaluable for getting the word out to the world that our ocean is becoming a synthetic soup. He's made remarks that plastic pollution in the marine environment is as significant and challenging an issue as climate change. As a Surfrider Foundation activist, and after working on plastic policy in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, I started to look more globally at the issue because the more I read, the more my heartstrings pulled at me; I wanted to engage full time. For real. I just needed an "in."  In April of 2009 I got that "in" and was invited to be part of a scientific research mission to The North Atlantic Gyre on The 5 Gyres Project (5gyres.org).

There exist five major subtropical oceanic gyres in the world (North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and Indian Oceans) and it is hypothesized by The 5 Gyres Project that these areas will collect plastic garbage much like The North Pacific does. A gyre is a naturally occurring phenomenon where two opposing dominant wind patterns (North and South) bend because of the earth's ubiquitous Coriolis Effect to form a swirling vortex in the ocean. In January of this year I boarded the science research sailing vessel, The Sea Dragon, as an embedded journalist. I got off the boat as a 5 Gyres Project board member. Seeing this collection of plastic trash in a vast wilderness of water, firsthand, had such a profound effect on me I quit my day job and started working on plastic issues full time. Most people (hopefully) have heard of The North Pacific Garbage Patch by now, but few realize that the problem exists in other parts of the ocean as well.

Now on land for a few months, I decided to tour the west coast in my 1984 Volkswagen Westfailia with surfboard and dog in tow. I'll go from San Diego to Tofino, B.C. documenting beaches, people, and plastic and share those stories with GOOD readers. Along the way, I'll be talking to Charles Moore, Surfrider CEO Jim Moriarty, Plastic Pollution Coalition co-founder Dianna Cohen, pro surfers Chris Malloy, Mary Osborne, and Jennifer Flanigan, as well as Portland Mayor Sam Adams and artist Chris Jordan. I'll also be chatting with plastic bloggers and ordinary folks who all have a stake in the sanctity of their beaches. As a full fledged marine plastic geek, I wanted to see what other folks with a big stake in the ocean had to say about plastic pollution and how we as a society might work together to solve this problem. So, in the coming weeks, I'll be posting on the interviews, pictures, videos, and stories I collect as I go. I hope you'll follow along.

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

]]> The writer and environmentalist Stiv Wilson is on a mission to better understand how plastic ends up in the ocean, and what he—and the rest of us—can do about it.

As a surfer, I've always been interested in the ocean's health. Several years ago I started noticing that no matter where I traveled one thing remained the same: Our world's beaches are covered with plastic debris. I've been to beaches in Nicaragua that are knee deep in plastic bottles, beaches in Canada where ground plastic is as ubiquitous as grains of sand. Understanding that plastic in the ocean doesn't biodegrade, I was alarmed. That alarm ultimately put me on a course that would change my life forever.

I read everything I could find on the subject. I combed through websites like Algalita.org whose founder, Captain Charles Moore, discovered The North Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997. Moore's research has been invaluable for getting the word out to the world that our ocean is becoming a synthetic soup. He's made remarks that plastic pollution in the marine environment is as significant and challenging an issue as climate change. As a Surfrider Foundation activist, and after working on plastic policy in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, I started to look more globally at the issue because the more I read, the more my heartstrings pulled at me; I wanted to engage full time. For real. I just needed an "in."  In April of 2009 I got that "in" and was invited to be part of a scientific research mission to The North Atlantic Gyre on The 5 Gyres Project (5gyres.org).

There exist five major subtropical oceanic gyres in the world (North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and Indian Oceans) and it is hypothesized by The 5 Gyres Project that these areas will collect plastic garbage much like The North Pacific does. A gyre is a naturally occurring phenomenon where two opposing dominant wind patterns (North and South) bend because of the earth's ubiquitous Coriolis Effect to form a swirling vortex in the ocean. In January of this year I boarded the science research sailing vessel, The Sea Dragon, as an embedded journalist. I got off the boat as a 5 Gyres Project board member. Seeing this collection of plastic trash in a vast wilderness of water, firsthand, had such a profound effect on me I quit my day job and started working on plastic issues full time. Most people (hopefully) have heard of The North Pacific Garbage Patch by now, but few realize that the problem exists in other parts of the ocean as well.

Now on land for a few months, I decided to tour the west coast in my 1984 Volkswagen Westfailia with surfboard and dog in tow. I'll go from San Diego to Tofino, B.C. documenting beaches, people, and plastic and share those stories with GOOD readers. Along the way, I'll be talking to Charles Moore, Surfrider CEO Jim Moriarty, Plastic Pollution Coalition co-founder Dianna Cohen, pro surfers Chris Malloy, Mary Osborne, and Jennifer Flanigan, as well as Portland Mayor Sam Adams and artist Chris Jordan. I'll also be chatting with plastic bloggers and ordinary folks who all have a stake in the sanctity of their beaches. As a full fledged marine plastic geek, I wanted to see what other folks with a big stake in the ocean had to say about plastic pollution and how we as a society might work together to solve this problem. So, in the coming weeks, I'll be posting on the interviews, pictures, videos, and stories I collect as I go. I hope you'll follow along.

Stiv Wilson is a freelance writer/photographer and the communications director for the 5gyres.org Project. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

]]> Stiv Wilson Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:18:00 PDT