My luminous stream by https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w Made with a dash of wit en-us 2017-10-13 15:03:34 UTC 2025-09-25 05:34:14 UTC hello@padlet.com PLASTIC ISLAND! luisamarrazzo99 https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196848422
]]> 2017-10-13 15:04:45 UTC https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196848422 luisamarrazzo99 https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196853182 2017-10-13 15:13:31 UTC https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196853182 PLASTIC ISLAND luisamarrazzo99 https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196863338 On the beach lies a motorcycle helmet, a mannequin's head, an umbrella handle, and a flip-flop. They didn't fall from a plane or off a ship, and there aren't any civilians living here who could have left them behind.
They were washed in with the tide, most likely from China or the US, thousands of miles away -- part of an enormous plastic garbage patch, spinning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which you probably contribute to. And these are just the bits of it we can see.
Plastic has become a vital part of our lives of convenience. Yet the coffee cup lids, water bottles and bags we use once and throw away do end up somewhere -- in landfills, but also in the ocean.
Nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists today. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already in the oceans, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, by weight, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Some 8 million tons of plastic trash leak into the ocean annually, and it's getting worse every year. Americans are said to use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
Nothing is an emergency until you feel the burn, or see the red lights. Here plastic's impact is staring you in the face.
Midway is out of sight, but again it is on the front line. Once home to the decisive battle that turned World War Two in favor of the US in the Pacific, it's now locked in a new fight.

]]> 2017-10-13 15:36:05 UTC https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196863338 THE SMELL OF DECAY luisamarrazzo99 https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196865112 The smell hits you first, and catches in your throat. It's the whiff of decay, of thousands of birds' bodies rotting. Part of this is nature: CNN visited the island in June -- the time of year when the Laysan albatross lay their chicks, who must learn to fly, or die.
Inside the slight skeleton of one albatross, we found bottle tops and a cigarette lighter amongst seemingly endless tiny shards of plastic. It's as if plastic actually was the bird's diet.These brightly colored plastic fragments were picked out of the sea by the bird's parents, who mistook them for food, then fed them to their offspring. The birds can't digest the plastic pieces but they still feel full, which causes malnutrition and death, according to researchers. Volunteers here have an almost full-time job scooping up the corpses.
]]> 2017-10-13 15:40:01 UTC https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196865112 SEAFOOD luisamarrazzo99 https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196867099 Seafood is essential to human life, but there is growing evidence that fish may prefer eating plastic to food.
There's also evidence that plastic is harmful to humans. The US government says styrene -- one of the key ingredients in plastic -- is probably a human carcinogen. It is studying the effects of plastic litter on marine life and plans to launch an inquiry into the effects on human health, including fetal formation.
One study found that man-made marine debris may cause "physical harm" to humans when ingested via seafood. Another estimated that Europeans who eat shellfish could be exposed to 11,000 pieces of micro-plastic each year.
"Plastics also attract other contaminants, so if you are eating food that has little bits of blue and red in there, these are attracting ... other contaminants in the ocean. This has a real impact on our primary food source."]]> 2017-10-13 15:44:10 UTC https://padlet.com/luisamarrazzo99/skr9jlg7vo8w/wish/196867099