A River of Plastic in our River?

Paper or Plastic? The best answer is “No thank you.”

Plastic trash of all sorts has become a huge and ever growing environmental problem. When we do our regular clean-ups in the Lynnhaven, the items that we find most frequently are the ever-present plastic bags and plastic bottles. We fill 15-20 garbage bags with plastic bottles and other plastic trash every six weeks in one 3-4 mile stretch along the Lynnhaven River. Think about that for a minute. Multiply that times our 150 miles of Lynnhaven River shoreline and you have a lot of discarded plastic bags and plastic bottles. The problem of what happens to all of the discarded plastics is a worldwide problem.

There is an area in the center of the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles across called the North Pacific gyre where a circular pattern in the currents traps floating objects. It is t is full of plastic trash---oil bottles, fishing line, nets and ropes, cracked bath toys---for hundreds of miles. Scientists are discovering growing numbers of fish, marine mammals and sea birds with their stomachs full of plastic bottle caps, disposable lighters and other plastic trash. This is pretty depressing information. Add one more dismal fact to this picture. The tiny pellets that all plastics are made from, called nurdles, are being found at alarming levels in some areas of our oceans, out numbering phytoplankton, and mixed in the sands on our beaches.

Each of us can contribute to reducing the problem of plastics in our environment by reducing our use of plastics and carefully recycling the plastics that we discard. Number 1 and number 2 plastics are the easiest to recycle and are the ones that are most likely to actually be recycled. Another way that we can help is to use reusable bags for our groceries and other shopping. This is why Lynnhaven River NOW decided to start selling reusable shopping bags---to help reduce the number of plastic bags ending up in our rivers and oceans.