Plastic island ....a new holiday destination?

Plastic was first called Bakelite and invented in 1909. It was considered a triumph.

Looking at the plastic continent amassing itself in the middle of the Pacific ocean I and a couple of billion other people think of it as the birth of a curse that has assumed a grotesque life of its own. Plastic packs trillions of items, many of them made from plastic themselves. We use it prolifically from birth to death and ironically it causes death on a scale that challenges the Holocaust and casualties of wars that have horrified us.

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This small section of the monster island is said to be at least the size of Texas and other experts state that it could be the size of Russia. This confusion is because a lot of the garbage hangs down and extends sideways beneath the water.

I live near the sea on the south coast of Kwa Zulu Natal and every time I walk on 'my' beach I collect items of plastic and rubbish that make me want to weep. Shiny chip packets are often swallowed by seals as they think they are fish and they die a slow miserable death. 

Education goes on in our places of education and on billboards but it seems that a huge bulk of the population simply doesn't care. Cruise ships passing in the night vomit tons of garbage,mostly plastic into our Indian ocean. A lot of it ends up on our beaches. There are horrendous photographs of whales, jelly fish, seals and penguins  ingesting plastic and dying.

What would a little girl think if she knew that the pretty little bow on her birthday gift had caused this turtle to be deformed to look like this!

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I can only imagine that the turtle swam through the loop  of nylon/plastic ribbon when it was small and it wedged around it. Being extremely tough it did not break as the turtle grew. It caused this hideous deformity.

Clean ups are organised and well attended but the sea is generally considered a giant garbage can that will go on and on absorbing all our toxic rubbish.

Shame on us!

There are however glimmers of hope all over the world. One of them is the cutlery and crockery industry.

Disposable plastic is an oxymoron......it's a lie because the average plastic plate or fork has a 450 year life span.

Lick your plate and eat it too!

A wheat farmer in Norway has come up with a way to use the excess bran after white flour has been sifted out. He mixed it with water, heated it and by pressurising it produced plates. It can even be microwaved and is edible if you are THAT hungry! It will disintegrate completely in 30 days ...a small  organic bit of material.

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Edible cutlery is being produced on mass out of sorghum flour that is also edible. It is made by an Indian company, Bakeys who make them tasty with spices or even sweetened, with vanilla. The amazing thing is that the energy required to produce ONE PLASTIC SPOON can be used instead to produce ONE HUNDRED EDIBLE SPOONS.

So progress is being made and there are many initiatives being worked on to help save our planet from destruction.

There is one villain who does not yet have an edible version. That is the plastic bottle that carries the ubiquitous supply of water that we all need to carry round the supermarket, on hikes and even to church. So general advice is to buy a water bottle that you can fill yourself from a reliable source, instead of buying the one off plastic bottles from handy fridges.

Be warned........ just don't get confused and try to take a bite out it when it is empty!

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