The Plastic Age

We are on a small distance island and I’m dismayed by what we found on the beach today, well, on every beach that we have been to. Bits and pieces, chunks and parts, sheets, rods, extrusions, barrels, bottles, shoes, rope, nets, balloons, bags, toys, and every other kind of plastic thing that the mind can conceive of. We are on Manjack Cay where there is only 1 full time resident family and they have been living there for about 20 years. They’ve cut a trail across the island to the ocean side and we walked over to see the beach. It was a beautiful, breath taking view of the ocean and a beach sweeping away into the distance with multi hued water lapping up onto the sands, just don’t look too close. Half buried in the sand was the remains of a throw away civilization... our civilization, spewed across this sandy beach. I walked ¼ of a mile down the beach and I could not take one stride without encountering plastic either to my left or my right. It grieved me to think of what my throw-away, consumerism culture (now spread throughout the world) has done to our planet. Here, standing on one small beach, on a remote island, in one (not so big) ocean of this vast planet I found it covered in our waste. If this is any indication of the other oceans around this world than I believe that the bio-sphere that we depend upon for life itself could be in peril. It was a sad day in paradise.
In the future, say, 10 million years from now, archeologists will remark on the ages of man. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Steel age and then the final age, the Plastic Age. For they will find that the earth was covered in a fine layer of plastic that destroy the base of the food chain and most of live itself.
I know, it sounds grim but damn, if you were here, you wouldn’t believe the extent of the plastic waste that I walked by. I believe that if any person could come down here and see this stuff they would think twice before thoughtlessly using plastic (water bottles) or of tossing plastic away again. Plastic waste is everywhere, absolutely everywhere. It doesn’t evaporate or disappear it just keeps breaking down into smaller and finer pieces until it begins to replaces the photo plankton in the food chain,,, it’s scary to think about and it just makes me sad to see it.
Sorry for the rant.
These are just a few of pictures of the uncountable bits of plastic that I passed.






PS Here is what the albatross now feed to their young.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1193130/Pictured-The-astonishing-collection-everyday-plastic-items-swallowed-single-albatross.html