Do the Blue

As we start the new year, I hope everyone will make a commitment to reduce your use of plastic.  Remember to bring your BlueBags to the grocery store – and please commit to, no more plastic, whenever and wherever possible.  If you need more evidence, artist and photojournalist Chris Jordan will break your heart with his devastating photos.

photo by Chris Jordan

The following is an except from his web site where he has documented the terrible toll our human waste, in particular plastics, have taken on the world’s oceans and vulnerable species everywhere:

Midway
Message from the Gyre

These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. 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.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, none of the plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the untouched stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

~cj, Seattle, October 2009

Please – do the blue – today!

Take a close look aound the next time you go outside, you’ll see plastic.  On you next walk or drive to the store, look in the trees, bushes, ditches.  You’ll be amazed at how much there is -- and how we’ve become oblivious to it.  For just one day, count how many plastic bags you use -- and then throw away.  What about plastic forks, plates, drink bottles and more.  We can see the plastic littering our landscape every day but we do not see the tragic accumulation of plastic in our earth’s oceans, lakes, streams, beaches and more.  This toxic trash takes tens of thousands of animal lives ever year.  We can all help.  Each decision we make to elliminate plastic from our daily lives, helps this planet and all life on it.  Do the Blue  -- today!!!