By Siobhan Adcock, iVillage.com
I just finished a wonderful book called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Since then, I have been dorking out to basically anyone who'll indulge me, trying to teach people some of the (many) things I learned by reading it. Did you know there's a huge swirling trash dump floating in the middle of the Pacific that's bigger than Texas? Did you know that we sent Chuck Berry songs into space to represent us to alien civilizations? Did you know there's forest primeval in the Bronx, but it's being basically sterilized by Bronx squirrels?
What I found most wonderful about Weisman's book, though, is its optimism. Even though our planet's overall health is, as we know, not good (and this book provides some jaw-droppingly clear examples of just how not-good that I'd never heard before), Weisman's writing and research makes clear just how resilient nature truly is. If and when we humans destroy ourselves, our planet will probably bounce back. I found that message to be oddly, counterintuitively reassuring.
Until I read about the plankton.
Just as plastic six-pack rings strangle sea otters, abandoned commercial fishing lines snare whales, and plastic bags suffocate sea turtles, on a smaller level, all the microscopic pieces of plastic that have been swept into the ocean are giving plankton, well, fatal constipation.
And it's all my fault. Okay, partly.
Apparently, two major sources of microscopic plastics in ocean water are 1.) plastic that's already washed out to sea, degrading into smaller and smaller bits like rock erodes into sand. And - this is the one that got me - 2.) exfoliating body scrubs, which are essentially made of thousands of tiny, unfilterable plastic beads that wash right into our water supply. Plankton apparently eat the "microbeads" in our body scrubs because they're the size of food, and then die of eating plastic.
Bad news, right? So I just squirted a whole bottle of Neutrogena into my trash in horror. And I switched to scrubs that contain ground-up nuts, salt, or sugar instead of plastic microbeads. Because sure, I like having decent-looking skin. But we humans are going to be around for a while longer, and I'm pulling for our planet. And I'm especially pulling for the plankton.
Siobhan Adcock
iVillage, Senior Producer - Network & Social Media
http://www.iVillage.com
Thanks for the info. Anything I can do to save the Earth, I will do.
Thank you for this short but punch packing piece of info. It just re-affirms some things that I have been saying to people,that seems like common sense to me, but thanks to greedy marketing and a Lemming mentality in the majority of the consumers, so much damage is being done to the planet and hence US, by making us think that this or that product will be the quick fix to make us look, feel (or have the life style) of the airbrushed, posed models on the excessively packaged products that are being sold.
I haven't read that book but it is now on my list of "must read". I make all Natural Soap and etc. and I usually use in my soaps Lemon Peel, Orange Peel, Ground Apricot seeds, coarse Sea Salt. My scrubs I like to use sea salt or organic sugar. Besides the plastics killing sea life I believe all the Artificial Colors and Scents are not only harmful to our skin but also to the ecosystem as they get washed into the sewers.
I am enjoying learning how we each can help save our health and our planet.