I love that name. It reminds me of Peter Rabbit or the Cabbage Patch dolls. Weird, huh? Ok, that should generate some emails. The name might be catchy and fun, but a recent article describing a “trash vortex” that may contain as much as 100 million tons of stuff (mainly plastic) is downright disturbing.

Stand on any beach along our beautiful coast and look out at the sea and it’s hard not to think of a pristine, ever-changing vast frontier. The crashing waves, the undulating waters that flow and ebb, and the fresh salt spray give the impression of nature’s beauty protected from man’s seeming endless destruction of our planet. It’s all an allusion of sorts. This rubbish dump stretches from about 500 miles off the California coast, past Hawaii, and almost all the way to Japan. According to the article, this trash - everything from abandoned kayaks to soda bottles - floats in a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and an extreme high pressure condition. It’s hard to visualize the magnitude of this until you realize this mass of “stuff” is conceivably twice the size of the continental United States.

Don’t hear a lot of politician talking about this on their stump speeches. So, if you’re not already so depressed by all the global-warming articles, link over and read this article. It’s a shocker.

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