WRITTEN BY SIBEL
ON THE SOUTH PACIFIC EXPEDITION FROM AUCKLAND TO BAY OF ISLANDS
Last night as I lay in my bunk I remembered the 1967 film The Graduate. It was Benjamin Braddock’s graduation party (Dustin Hoffman’s character) and their neighbour is giving Benjamin career advice: “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word… Plastics.” He adds, “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it”.
So here we are, 59 years later, and that’s all that some of us are doing: thinking about it. And working on it. Thinking about how to replace it. Thinking about how to dispose of it… Thinking about how it has invaded not only our lives, but the lives of every living species on the planet.
Photo credit: Taylor Maddalene Myers
And so here we are, in the South Pacific: a group of 13 women trying to identify how it is that plastic gets into our oceans; working on quantifying the magnitude of the problem; and thinking about solutions. We actually have a solutions session planned in our schedule. But we are all so invested in the issue that we find ourselves discussing it even during our free time.
Plastics: it’s not enough to just think about it. We need to do something.
