Friday, October 23, 2009

Bottle caps

My photo for the International Day of Climate Change shows bottle caps picked up in my neighborhood. This video shows bottle caps picked up in a different neighborhood: by albatross chicks at Midway Atoll, in the North Pacific.



The photos were taken by Chris Jordan, who traveled there with a group of artists to document the affect of plastic waste at Midway. He explains:
The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
As a child in the 70s, I remember a big public push to get rid of, or at least cut up 6-pack rings, because they were killing marine life. I wonder if Chris Jordan's photos will do the same thing now for bottle caps? Perhaps 6-pack rings were unfairly targeted, because people missed the forest for the trees. The rings were part of a much bigger picture, the problem we still have today: plastic pollution.

It is hard to miss that both items are made from plastic.

3 comments:

Ramona Daniel Gault said...

Thanks for posting Chris Jordan's staggering photos. I am bird lover who saw the photos last week when a friend sent a link to Chris's web site. I'm so horrified I have decided to make this my issue. Good to find your blog; please keep it up. If we keep adding voices, maybe things will change. Blessings!

ThreadBeaur said...

So sad. If more people were aware of these pictures, maybe they would be more careful of their use of plastic. I know that it can't be fixed overnight, but every little bit helps.

icare said...

Thank you for this post and for helping to spread awareness! It is truly a shame that people can be so careless. (shakes head)