Terrible Beauty
Out walking at lunch I came upon a garbage patch in the Fort Point Channel near Gillette Headquarters. I thought: here’s the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in miniature, but no less terrible.
One of my coworkers commented on the incongruous beauty in the photograph I took: a well-composed conglomerate of shapes, colors and textures — a trashy abstract expressionism.
For me, the sight brought to mind a beach I visited a couple of years ago in Cabuya, Costa Rica at the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula. There, the sea had artfully deposited plastic scraps and plastic bottles at the high tide mark,
and smooth warm beach rocks crammed the shelves of a refrigerator door.
Always one to state the obvious, the obvious dawns on me: we are living and dying by the ubiquitous cap and applicator and storage bin. But we can change, must change.
Further Reading on Plastic Pollution and Breaking the Plastic Addiction:
- Deborah Bassett – Breaking the Plastic Addiction:Â TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch from Huffington Post – November 11, 2010
- My Plastic-Free Life – Blog