North Pacific Gyre

If you don't know about this, you need to. The North Pacific Gyre is an enormous vortex of plastic debris roughly twice the size of the United States. Check out this article.
I do my little part to keep the debris I find from reaching the ocean, but I was horrified when I saw this. There's no way my little kayak can have an impact of this, but I think people need to seriously think about the use of plastics in our society.
Sure, plastics help with sanitary things like medicine and food, but everything from the petroleum used to the energy needed to process it, to the disposal of it is a serious ecological disaster. Think about this: A glass bottle can be recycled, melted down and made into another glass bottle, the same goes for metals. Plastic however, cannot. A plastic bottle gets re-manufactured into something like a fleece jacket or sleeping bag stuffing. And from there it certainly won't get recycled.

Here's a couple of sobering facts:
- Plastic debris kills more than 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals every year
- Plastic pellets soak up chemicals and DDT they are then ingested by fish and eaten by us
- It is estimated that each square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of plastic
- Degraded plastic particles resemble zooplankton and are consumed by marine life
- Plastic particles outnumber zooplankton by a factor of 6 in this area
Additional Information: from Wiser Earth