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Turning the plastic tide: System 001 and us
This weekend in Alameda, San Francisco, something will happen that could change the course of events for life on earth
On September 8 The Ocean Cleanup will launch it’s first cleanup system in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. For the last 18 months I’ve been eagerly awaiting this moment and it is SO exciting to think we are just days away from starting to turn things around for the major global environmental disaster that is ocean plastic pollution. While our future would look very bleak without this incredible initiative, The Ocean Cleanup will not solve plastic pollution single-handedly. We also need to tackle it at the SOURCE and that means breaking our decades-long disposable plastic habit.
In 1997, somewhere between Hawai’i and California, Captain Charles Moore discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on his way home from a yacht race. Completely oblivious to this, I was busy with the final year of my environmental science degree, heading shortly after into local government where I would be educating local residents about picking up their dog poo and washing their car on the lawn, to prevent pollution from entering local waterways and the ocean.
It wasn’t until 15 years later that I heard about an island of garbage the size of Texas…
