On July 26, 2010, the Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran made from 12,500 plastic bottles and other reclaimed plastics, all of which are held together with biodegradable adhesive so that the boat’s materials can eventually be recycled or re-purposed, finished her 12,000 mile voyage across the Pacific, traveling from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia. The boat, like her namesake the Kontiki (a vessel built in 1947 with traditional methods and used to demonstrate the seafaring potential of specific pre-industrial peoples), was purpose built for its expedition in order to call attention to the tremendous amount of plastic pollution present in our oceans. Her course was set through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of cast-off plastic debris brought together by converging currents in an area between California and Hawaii, generally estimated to be the size of Texas, and, according the Plastiki Expedition’s website, responsible for the deaths of 1 million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles annually. The boat’s recycled, recyclable construction serves as a reminder that the creation of waste, of products with a definite landfill-focused end, does not have to be inevitable.
How are we on Lake Champlain to react to the gyre of trash that swirls in the Pacific? The Garbage Patch is certainly nowhere near close to home geographically and, ideologically, the concept of animals struggling amidst a cloud of plastic particles far from the sight of land is admittedly more abstract than the many more immediate challenges we face daily. Floating bottles hundreds of miles out to sea? What’s the real concern? Regretfully, whether we’re conscious of it or not, the garbage in this patch is slowly changing from large pieces inaccessible to wildlife into smaller pieces on which animals can fatally choke or become entangled. These pieces then further deteriorate into microscopic particles, many of which wind up being eaten, sucked in, or otherwise consumed by fish, plankton, and birds. These toxins affect not only the health of the organisms that swim in them but, once these poisoned creatures end up at the grocery store, affect ourselves as well. In this way, even the least tree-hugging, animal-loving among us is harmed by the vast quantities of chemical and particulate pollution present in our oceans – what has historically been a great source of food grows more poisoned and less full of life by the day.
These very same challenges are found in our own community, albeit on a reduced scale. Few days go by that a bottle, cup, or bait container isn’t found floating in the lake. Here, with no swirling current to condense them, the garbage tends towards to the shore where proactive individuals can remove it. Still, these and other contaminants manage to take their toll. Once these materials, and other more chemical pollutants, are present in the water, they accumulate in everything that lives within it, growing in concentration in proportion to the organism’s place in the food chain. The problem is severe enough that the Vermont Department of Health publishes suggested safety limits for human consumption of local fish, crossing some species completely off the list.
Although the challenges we face are large and the momentum behind their causes substantial, I’m encouraged to see the campers at the Sailing Center this summer engaging with their environment in a positive and personal way. Can having a personal relationship with the local environment make far off ecological disasters less abstract? Can having spent a summer playing on a lake, relying on wind for power, help to forge a generation with a stronger sense of belonging within, rather than being separate from, the natural world? There are no easy answers but, seeing week after week of parents bringing their kids to play on the lake, to learn first-hand about the environment of their home town, enacting a concept of recreation that relies less on material consumption and more on playful adventure with new friends, I’m hopeful that we can soon begin to build some solutions.
-Nick
