Flotsam and Jetsam

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.

Ben: Yes sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Ben: Yes I am.

Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'

Ben: Exactly how do you mean?

Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics.
Think about it. Will you think about it?

Ben: Yes I will.

Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.

Nearly 40 years after The Graduate hit movie theaters, the "great future" of plastic is here. We are awash in the stuff -- literally. The oceans have become a plastic graveyard. Which is precisely the subject of the latest installment in the Los Angeles Times 5-part series, "Altered Oceans."

Reporter Kenneth R. Weiss, who should get a Pulitzer for the series, describes for readers "a slowly rotating mass of trash-laden water about twice the size of Texas."

This is known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, part of a system of currents called the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Located halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii, the garbage patch is an area of slack winds and sluggish currents where flotsam collects from around the Pacific, much like foam piling up in the calm center of a hot tub.

About 80 percent of that flotsam comes from land, reports Weiss, and nearly 90 percent of it is plastic.

Think about it.

Will you think about it?

Deal.