The Great Pacific Garbage Patch—the plastic-ridden trash vortex between the West Coast of North America and Japan—is back in the news. It is twice the size of Texas but somewhat different. Texas has a handful of books.
Trapped in plastic as we are and not having any idea how we got here, our plastic islands may have to register as actual locations on our maps—if for no other reason than to prevent a pilot from going down in history for trying to emergency land on a runway made of disposable dollar stores.
And I’ve heard so much about microplastics and synthetic microfibers coughing out of our carpets and our clothing, or spewing out of our dryer vents by the billions, that our lungs are now wrinkle-proof. And they’re water-borne, having found their way into fish and other seafood, into honey, beer, meat and, now it appears, into human bloodstreams. That actually makes us part plastic. Just short of unbreakable life-size action figures.
One day, the human species in a new mutation could become Homo Polyvinylensis.
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