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extravagant amounts of money on foolish things like: $35,000 toilets, 1 million dollar birthday parties for their family members, own 5 homes around the world and put miniscule dollars to work recycling the products and product containers they are making mega profits from. Now their elite wasteful lifestyles have depleted many company profits and they need a bailout. What!

America was once a land of vast resources and pristine rivers, picturesque praires, unspoiled mountains and lakes where fishing produced healthy fish. We were surrounded by oceans abounding with seafood that we could eat without fear of mercury poisoning and deadly plastic polymers entering our bodies. The Industrial Revolution - Greed - Neglect - Lack of Moral Responsibility and a society with no sense of Stewardship has lead to the creation of "the great Pacific Garbage Patch".

Cleaning up the "Garbage Patch Continent" will mean changing our habits and priorities. It seems obvious, to me, that we need to reuse-recycle-reduce use, while holding the corporate world accountable to ocean dumping and make EPA watch where trash collectors dump the junk! This ocean dump is avoidable and there are solutions to stopping its growth, in fact recent studies (Greenpeace - "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, 2006) have presented evidence that 80% of all the trash in the oceans comes from "land litter"!
In June the 151ft ship 'Kaisei' will set sail for the "Garbage Patch" on an expedition to "retrieve and recycle" some of the trash (much of it disintegrated into small particles that have absorbed heavy metals and other deadly chemicals over time). This mission of hope funded inpart by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Brita water company will try and analyize the task of possible clean-up efforts, the depth of the "Garbage Patch" debris field and the feasibility along with economical cost to recycle what they find.
Start taking cloth bags to the grocery store and stop buying water in plastic bottles, use a canteen! Simple steps to change our wasteful ways and habits might help keep the "Pacific Garbage Patch" from growing and keep you from explaining to your grandchildren why they can not eat fish from the sea anymore!

Learn more about this author, Pam Uher.
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