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| Main currents creating North Pacific Subtropical Gyre image from NOAA |
By Jamie Douglas
That convenient little bag that your local merchant automatically stuffs everything you buy into, from a tube of cream to a full-on grocery-shopping excursion, is turning into one of the 21st century’s biggest ecological nightmares, and it just won’t go away.
As an example, a couple of years ago, when we first came to Patagonia, we spent a few days in the Gnome and Chocolate capital of Argentina, San Carlos de Bariloche, before setting out an a scenic 2 hour bus ride south to El Bolsón.
As we climbed out of Bariloche, there was a stiff breeze blowing, and on the outskirts of town, thousands of the plastic (polyethylene) shopping bags were dancing their crazy existentialist dance over the poor side of town, and every fence and tree was covered with pathetic Christmas tree like ornaments. It was a very sad and unsightly “Adios” to Bariloche.
Now by world standards, Bariloche is not very big, but between all the tourist shops and supermarkets, mom and pop stores and everyone selling anything, the unnatural accumulation of plastic bags is perhaps bigger than what it should be, and it would be a brilliant place to start distributing reusable shopping bags at cost. But it seems that the supermarkets, which have the biggest influence in this regard, while advertising reusable bags at cost, are actually making a huge profit off them, and on top of importing them from China, making matters even worse, they do not last. In contrast, in 2006 I purchased reusable shopping bags from a Carrefour store on the Island of Tahiti, and the same year we also purchased cloth bags from Cole’s in Australia, and I am happy to report that they are still being used several times a week, and they are holding up great. That is almost five years! When we first started using them in Argentina, the security personnel wanted us to stick them into lockers, to make sure we were not shoplifting, but now, we keep them folded up and put them at the bottom of the cart, and they don’t even give us a second look.
Last year over a trillion of the ubiquitous little buggers were manufactured, mostly in China (I am not blaming China here, but the end consumer), and it is estimated that it will take them 1000 years to break down through photodegradation. Unfortunately most of them get buried or float down rivers, get caught up in estuaries, and many eventually end up in the ocean, where there are a couple of giant whirlpools of plastic debris that just keep getting bigger and bigger, chocking out all life through the deprivation of photosynthesis, the life-giving process within our waters that makes fisheries possible, along with healthy reefs, wetlands, and inland waters.
The oceans, by virtue of the earth’s rotation, have several gyres, which are spirals of seawater formed by colliding currents. One of the largest fills most of the space between Japan and California. The upper part of this gyre, or convergence zone, a few hundred miles north of Hawaii, is where warm water from the South Pacific merges with the cooler water from the north. Known as the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, this is also where a huge amount of trash collects. It has been measured from satellite images, and depending on the interpretation of the data, has been estimated to be anywhere between no smaller than Texas to as large as twice the size of the Lone Star State.
That should impress upon even the most ardent of Dallas or Houston shoppers to think twice about walking around the mall carrying those Texas size plastic bags containing cosmetic samples, because they will end up in a similar location in the North Atlantic Ocean, where the flotsam of the planet has formed a new meeting place, a virtual killing ground for marine mammals and sea birds. There are also miles and miles of abandoned or lost drift nets, which are floating killing machines to anything they encounter, but that is a completely different story, which I may touch on in some other issue.
The use of these temporary (10 minutes average in actual use) but long lasting carrying devices, (up to 1000 years in the environment) has been somewhat curbed. Some forward looking municipalities have passed outright bans on the use of them, while entire nations have outlawed them. Progress is being made, but it takes all of us, working together, to make a difference.
Take care of your mother earth; she is the only one we have. Lead by example!
Jamie Douglas
Patagonia
To contact Jamie regarding this article, email: jamie@expatdailynews.com
Jamie Douglas is an Adventurer, Writer and Photographer with an amazing array of Nikon equipment, and a lifetime of experience traveling and documenting. To contact him for assignments and new adventures. email: jamie.douglas [at] yahoo.com
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