Plastic Ocean

It's been a while since I've been obsessed with anything. When I was younger, I had my Backstreet Boys obsession, my Star Wars obsession, my Anne Rice obsession, my Jim Carrey obsession, etc.

I have a new one!

A RECYCLING OBSESSION!!!

And in particular...a PLASTIC Recycling obsession.

I'm obsessed with tossing our mouth-wash bottles, juice bottles, TV dinner bowls--you name it--into the recycling bin.

I'm even taking it to the next level!

Just the other day, I went out to eat with a friend from work. We went to Long John Silvers. And after I finished, I told him not to laugh at me bu that I was going to wash out my plastic tray in the bathroom and take it home to recycle.

Laughter. "Just throw it away, Carrie!"

"No! I have to save it!"

I'm taking plastic cups home from work, plastic containers that hold things like binding materials, giant wads of plastic wrap! I snatched several plastic cups off the tables at my soon-to-be-sister-in-law's graduation party yesterday and brought them home. Into the recycling bin they went!!

I'm constantly looking at the bottoms of containers and bottles, and if I see the blessed recycling triangle, I let out a triumphant little "Yesssssss!"

I don't think a lot of you have any clue how bad the plastic situation has gotten in the ocean. Not one clue.

But it's bad, people.

REALLY bad.

Like, makes-me-embarrassed-to-be-a-human bad.

And we really NEED to start doing something about it. We needed to start YEARS ago.

Don't believe me? Well, get a load of this:



Plastic was designed to last forever. So when it gets thrown into the water, it doesn't bio-degrade. It just stays like that. A news special on NBC recently announced that there is more weight in PLASTIC in parts of the ocean than there is PLANKTON.

There are entire BEACHES forming, whose sands are made of tiny particles of plastic!!



This plastic junk gets stuck in jellyfish, and then turtles eat the jellyfish, and CHOKE to death on the PLASTIC! OR the poor turtles think that a plastic bag IS a jellyfish, and then choke to death on THAT!


You can do something about the bags, at least. Wal-Mart and Target stores have places you can toss the bags, and they'll get recycled.

And other than that, you can check your local city to see if there is a weekly recycling bin pick-up. If there is, I urge you to get involved with that. And if not, check around. Call information and see what your city offers.

And in the meantime, I'm going to continue my little obsession...and hope it starts to rub off on other people like you!