We Are What We Eat—And There’s Plastic in Our Fish…

08 Jun, 2012

Created by: MastersDegree.net

The art of Infographics helps drive home a new, and not so happy demon­stra­tion of  the old adage of “You are what you eat.” For cen­turies, we have been using our oceans as garbage dis­pos­als (out of sight, out of mind).

In more recent decades, since the advent and explo­sion of the non-biodegradeable plas­tics, that “dis­posal” is back­ing up. The plas­tics that have become daily con­ve­niences for us are becom­ing a part of our food chain.

When an area of ocean larger than the United States land mass became known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the media began to take a bit of notice. But we col­lec­tively need to take much larger actions. Los Angeles, after an extended bat­tle with plas­tic indus­try lob­by­ists, finally passed a ban on plas­tic gro­cery bags. But this will take time to imple­ment and, as big as Los Angeles is, this reduc­tion in plas­tic use is a minute frac­tion of the problem.

Solving our addic­tion to plas­tics and garbage dump­ing is not some­thing that can be han­dled overnight. Certainly it can’t be done with­out even con­fronting the fact that there’s a prob­lem. Hopefully this image will help. What you see at the right is lit­er­ally just the tip of the garbage ice­berg. Click to see the big picture…

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