“A Plastic Ocean” Event Reflection

I walked into the Plastic Oceans event not expecting much. I’d seen a short piece of the full documentary during a Global Scholars meeting, and although I found the subject matter interesting, I originally wasn’t particularly moved. After tonight’s event, however, I find myself motivated both to learn more about ocean pollution and to take action.

In my opinion, the most affecting parts of the documentary (and the question and answer session with Mr. Leipzig) were the depictions of ocean animals stuck in trash, the explanation of the “plastic smog”, and the statistics about animals eating plastic. I was particularly shocked to see how much plastic was found in the seabird dissected in the documentary. Mr. Leipzig mentioned that 15% of that bird’s body mass was plastic, and put that statistic in context by explaining that 15% of a human’s body mass is equivalent to about 12 pizzas. It’s horrible to think that humans are consuming these animals and are thus consuming unimaginable amounts of plastic.

The documentary’s choice to position the issue of plastic in our oceans as a public health issue was ingenious; it caused me (and I’m sure many of the attendees) to think of pollution as less of an abstract concept and to take Mr. Leipzig’s suggestions for positive change more seriously. One of his most interesting suggestions was to ban plastic on Poly’s campus in the next couple of years. From purchases vending machines to lack of care around recycling and composting, Poly students consume and waste a lot of plastic. It would be interesting to change our consumption habits and establish Poly as a model of sustainability amongst the private school community.