Plastics Crisis – Coming in with the Tide

NPR published a story just before Christmas (At this museum, the tide brings in odd treasures that become a lasting lesson) that I thought was worth featuring in a blog post of its own rather than just adding it to my weekly gleanings post.

My first thought was how familiar so many of the objects looked. Most are relatively small. They are colorful. They don’t look worn although some of them might be decades old. It is easy to image them accidently floating away in the water rather than being thrown away intentionally. Then again – most of them were so inexpensive that maybe their owners were not bothered too much that they were lost on a beach.

My second thought was how this museum and the crafted message about “human consumption and the eternal life of plastic waste” can serve as a tutorial for how to talk about plastics and microplastics in our community. We need to find ways to be “persuasive without being preachy.”