I volunteer at a local school and today my student dumped the contents of her pencil pouch in search of a pencil. Everything here is permanent plastic pollution - including the pencils coated in yellow plastic paint.
The day I started putting this gallery page together, I went out for a walk and in under five minutes, spotted what was left of this plastic pen near a storm drain.
Example of a “Last Plastic Markers” collection bucket. Keep it on display, and don’t fall for Marker “Recycling” programs (they exist to ease “plastic guilt” and to get you to feel good about buying more disposable plastic markers).
Plastic pen (run over by car) - Pieces like this wash down storm drains and out to local waterways ALL. THE. TIME.
Highlighter I pulled from the Bay.
ALL plastic markers are PERMANENT markers because all plastic is forever.
The items I picked up were a combination of what washed up out of the ocean, and what washed down from the waterfall (storm drain fallout). All of it plastic - all of it forever pollution.
Spotted atop neighbor’s recycling bin: a vinyl binder + old backpack. This is called WISHCYCLING - Putting what belongs in landfill in a recycling bin because we wish it could be recycled. Pretending “someone” is going to do something “eco” with it all makes us feel better about buying more garbage.
Zoomed in on a tiny plastic bead likely run over by a car - These microplastics will wash down a storm drain and into local waterways, becoming part of the 11 million metric tons of plastic estimated to enter the world’s oceans annually.
What remains of a mylar balloon pulled from the Bay. HARD no on balloons all around - plus helium is a finite resource… what a pointless and dangerous use for it.
Things that should not exist: Foam Stickers. Pointlessly adding to the plastic now contaminating the air, water, soil + oceans that all life on this planet depend on - INCLUDING BEES.
Plastic page protector (for a 3-ring binder) pulled from the Bay. No piece of paper in a student’s binder ever has or ever will justify the use of plastic page protectors. Same goes for lamination.
What remains of a ziploc bag pulled from the Bay - the rest is inside the fish that nibbled at it, or photo-degraded into micro bits joining the exponentially exploding plastic pollution crisis in the world’s oceans, that spans the surface, to the sea floor.
True, and a good place to start is by not purchasing anything spiral-bound (destined for landfill) - opting instead for curbside recyclable notebooks not wrapped in plastic.
How I spend my time at the beach.