Word: plasticities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...film, many a desert-island castaway has put a message in a bottle and cast it out to sea, hoping it would someday reach land. Sorry, all you modern-day Robinson Crusoes, try that with a plastic bottle in real life, and your message will probably end up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, bobbing in a floating collection of trash known as the Plastic Vortex. It's an accumulation of plastic debris swept into the Pacific - whether directly from beaches or flowing out of rivers - and carried by equatorial currents into a swirling pattern to one spot between...
...Plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic toys - even last year's Crocs - end up in the shifting vortex, which some scientists estimate to be twice the size of Texas. And as plastic use increases, especially in rapidly growing developing nations on the western end of the Pacific, that vortex will continue to grow. "It's huge," notes Doug Woodring, an entrepreneur and ocean conservationist in Hong Kong. But "unfortunately the ocean is a big place, and once it's out of sight, it's out of mind." (See TIME's photos: Fragile Planet...
...Woodring is trying to change that. With help from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Woodring and several colleagues in ocean conservation are launching a two-ship expedition to the plastic vortex to explore it, take photographs and video and alert the public about the growing threat of ocean waste. "We need to make people realize what we are doing to our ocean," says Woodring...
...ships - the New Horizon from Scripps in San Diego, and the Kaisei from San Francisco - will depart from California for nearly monthlong missions to the vortex. The New Horizon will focus on scientific research, looking at the impact of the plastic vortex on marine life in the Pacific. As the plastic bakes in the sun, it slowly breaks down, leaching toxic chemicals into the water that may harm fish - and eventually us, when we eat them...
Admission is eventually granted, and amid the hanging plastic carrier bags and dim lighting, the shop owner unhooks a large basket from the ceiling. She proceeds to reveal two Chanel clutches and a Hermes bag. San Remo buildings are simple in style, but something suggests that this shop is more than just an unpretentious guise. The owner pulls more and more high-end designer bags out of the cheaper merchandise, each item indistinguishable from genuine upmarket products. She claims that most of the bags are simply very good quality fakes, but admits that a couple may have...