Plastic is Drastic: Part Two

By “Bug” Deakin

From the diary of the children of the Law Firm: 

Spinner, Bottlenose and Dolphin . . .

Hi humans, this is Spinnerita. I am the great, great, great grand daughter of the master spinner who told us the story of the waters of the Great Currents that were before your time. Currently in the middle of this concurrent current is a cacophony of plastic! We use sonar to find things, and the echoes in the Gyre are deafening! You should listen to us, we have been here over 10 million years, and you have been here only 3.5 million years. We are your elders! There are 11 million species on this planet and one species has made more garbage than all the rest of us combined.

When we are very little we learn to swim in the plastic swimming pool that is much bigger than the one you had in your back yard. Our swimming pool takes us about a month to swim around, of course that is, if we do not stop to play. If you have ever watched dolphins you know that not playing is not something we do well.

Let’s talk Gyre.
Your contributions to it are amazingly diverse. Have you ever kept track of how much plastic you use every day? My parents have been hired to get your parents, apparently, to take your Drastic Plastic Back. That is to say, we want you to take back all your plastic that is floating in the Big Eddy. We all like to play with Eddy. You call him a Gyre. We swim a lot. We can even swim up to 2500 miles in a month. That means we could swim around the world in less than a year, except for the big fat continent islands where you guys make all your plastic swimming pools. Newspaper stories have deadlines, our deadlines are the ones starting to form when we eat too much plastic fish, and when our friends the birds feed plastic to their young ones . . . which is the point of this article. (Why do they call it an article when it is mostly words? These are wordicles aren’t they? The articles should be the ones where you have all the pretty pictures! )

A good place to start
Why don’t you guys save all your plastic in big hills on your continent island places? You seem to like climbing mountains and the clouds like hanging around them, and if you make them high enough it will snow on them, and then you could surf on the snow! We really want you to take your PLASTIC back, cause it is DRASTIC! I think you might have a hard time taking it back, because there is so much of it and it is mostly little tiny bits. Maybe a good place to start would be to not dump any more in the ocean to start with! Starting at the start is a good place to start! So listen to the people with the good ideas of how to avoid plastic. Drink the good water out of your tap. Put it in a shiny stainless steel water bottle. Here are the words to our anthem, written by Sebastian Nau. We call him Sea Bass. Maybe he’s related! We like this song a lot. We are calling for you!

Far off the ocean’s shore
There's an island that's no man’s home
It's not a city but we all should know
Where it is ‘cuz it's bound to grow
Unless we make something happen.
It's time to make things right,
Save this world in which we live
One step at a time.

We all can make a difference,
Retire the gyres in our lives
We're not the victims,
We're the perpetrators of this crime
Unless we make something happen.
It's time to make things right,
Save the world in which we live
One step at a time.

I know and you should too
We're calling,, calling for you
We still have every piece man made.
Plastic is drastic ,make no mistake
We can't bring back the lives it takes.

It don't go away
I know and you should too
We're calling, calling for you.

Update on Plastic is Drastic Campaign
As we have written before, we are shepherding a campaign with KRSH Radio 95.9, Heritage Salvage and our good pal Vesta at the Gazette here. We will be choosing 3 families to participate in a 3-week test; we still have families signing up to be chosen . Please see the previous article for details, or go to http://www.heritagesalvage.com/plastic-is-drastic . So far, Montgomery High School’s Green Team and Sonoma Day School will make art from the plastic collected by the participating families. We are looking for one more school to get involved. Heritage Salvage will come by and pick up the plastic from the families each week, then deliver it to each school. They will have 3 weeks to make an art piece. We will showcase them at the CD release party with Hillside Fire, Heritage Salvage, the Gazette and KRSH 95.9 Radio! We will publish the families next month, stay tuned! The most comprehensive read on this whole series is on the Gazette Website at http://sonomacountygazette.blogspot.com/2011/01/plastic-is-drastic-save-our-oceans-fish.html

Love your Planet!
Heritage Salvage, 1473 Petaluma Blvd So., Petaluma, Ca 94952, (707) 762-6277
http://www.heritagesalvage.com "Practicing sustainable enthusiasm"