In the Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who was cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.

A beach cleanup on Midway Atoll made us feel just like Sisyphus.

There are millions of tons of plastics present in our oceans, and these are constantly fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces which are scattered throughout the water column and present, in different densities, throughout all the worlds oceans.

Contrary to what many people believe, there are no visible islands of trash anywhere –even if some areas, the gyres, accumulate higher densities of plastic pollution. In actuality, what is happening is much more complex and scary: our oceans are becoming a planetary soup laced with plastic.

To make thing worse, these tiny pieces of plastic are extremely powerful chemical accumulators for organic persistent pollutants present in ambient sea water such as DDE‘s and PCB‘s. The whole food chain, invertebrates, fish, sea turtles… are eating plastic and /or other animals who have plastic in them. This means that we are. Like the albatrosses on Midway, we carry the garbage patch inside of us.

Cleaning up this mess is not feasible, technically or economically. Even if all the boats in the world were put to the task somehow, the cleanup would not only remove the plastics but also the plankton, which is the base of the food chain, and is responsible for capturing half of the CO2 of our atmosphere and generating half of the oxygen we need to breathe.

But even if this problem was solved too somehow, the amount of plastic that we could capture, at an immense cost, would be a drop in the bucket as compared to the amount that flows into the ocean every day.

No matter how hard we push, in terms of technology or money, the boulder will be rolling back down the hill, throughout eternity, unless we stop putting more plastics into our environment.

The good news is that we can do this. We can do this now. We need to start a social movement that spreads virally and creates a critical mass of concerned citizens who pledge to move away from our disposable habits, and who raise their voice to reject and reverse a throwaway culture that might be profitable, but whose consequences are intolerable.

Video by Jan Vozenilek
Written and narrated by: Manuel Maqueda
Music by Christen Lien www.itsnotaviolin.com

Click here to see a satellite image of the exact location of this video (click on ‘view map’ and zoom all the way in.)

This footage was broadcast by the CHBC News channel for the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, Canada, and posted on the internet on November 2nd, 2009. Link to original news post and footage here.

This video was premiered on October 24 at a private event in Malibu, California convened by the Plastic Pollution Coalition and hosted by our friends from  The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.  Composer and viola player Christen Lien played ‘15 Aftermaths‘ live, a piece she composed at the age of 15.

These photographs were captured by  Chris Jordan during Midway Journey, an expedition to Midway Atoll to document the effects of plastic pollution on baby albatrosses.  The PPC was a supporter of this effort.  Midway Journey expedition team members Victoria Sloan Jordan, Jan Vozenilek and Bill Weaver joined us for this event.

Poet Victoria Sloan Jordan read a powerful poem she wrote on Midway.  Some of the plastic objects seen inside of these baby albatrosses were displayed during the event.

An HD version (recommended) can be viewed here.

The original quicktime file (103 MB, great for education or events) can be downloaded fron this link.

Christen’s debut album, Battle Cry, is available for sale on her website.

Images and video: Chris Jordan. Music: Christen Lien .

The evening started off with a short introduction by PPC co-founders Lisa Boyle, Dianna Cohen, Manuel Maqueda and Daniella Russo, followed by a screening of the trailer of Bag It!, a film by Susan Beraza about the global production, use, and disposal of plastic bags and other plastics. The audience loved the fast-paced trailer with subtle touches of humor.  We can’t wait for this independent production to come out and succeed.

Next on the screen was a sneak preview of footage captured by Bill Weaver and Jan Vozenilek during Midway Journey, a trip to Midway Atoll by five media artists led by photographer Chris Jordan, to document the effects of plastic pollution in the central pacific.  The demo showed Chris Jordan struggling with his feelings as he captures horrific images of dead albatross chicks filled with plastic pollution, and hinted at the different layers of metaphor illustrated by this environmental tragedy.

After that was a segment from National Geographic’s Strange Days on Planet Earth, an award-winning PBS series, hosted and narrated by Academy Award nominee Edward Norton. Strange Days is a production of Plastic Pollution Coalition Member organization SeaStudios Foundation that first aired in the spring of 2005, and was the first major production to highlight the spiraling problem of plastic pollution in the oceans, on land, and inside of our bodies.  Strange Days fact-finding tone, akin to a mystery film, grips the viewer from the fist moment and takes him in a mission to uncover, clue-by-clue, explanations to the multiple ramifications of the plastic pollution problem.

Next was our feature presentation for the night: Tapped, a documentary about the bottled water industry from director and Plastic Pollution Coalition Advisor Stephanie Soechtig.  Stephanie and her production team mates introduced briefly the film on stage. Tapped took the audience on a fascinating and shocking journey of discovery through the many layers of problems directly connected to bottled water:  climate change, dependance on oil, threats to water rights and public health and, of course, plastic pollution.  An absolutely essential film that everyone should watch.

After the show, filmmaker Bill Weaver from Midway Journey joined PPC cofounders Lisa Boyle, Dianna Cohen, Manuel Maqueda and Daniella Russo, on a panel for a session of Q&A’s.  Anna Cummins founder of Bring Your Own and member of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation also joined the panel briefly to talk about her latest projects.  A very active participant in the discussion was musician and Plastic Pollution Coalition supporter Jackson Browne, who joined us for the entire evening.

Is Plastic Washed up? a Film Series about Plastic Pollution, was made possible by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Monkey Business, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, and the UCLA Institute of the Environment, with additional support from the UCLA Education for Sustainable Living Program.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this event a success!