Floating Trash Carries a Message
Marcus Eriksen, Director of Resarch and Education, built the "COLA-Hoga" boat for the Great Lake Erie Boat Float in Cleveland in October to raise awareness about the environmental impacts of plastic.
Visit any of Ohio's beaches and you are likely to find plastic trash at your feet. One October morning there were literally thousands of plastic bottles on the Lake Erie shore at Edgewater State Park Beach in Cleveland. Except the bottles were assembled into boats to compete in the Great Lake Erie Boat Float. Ten boats were built out of what most of us would consider plastic trash.
Vessels like "The Love Craft" were made out of 2 liter soda bottles, an old box spring, yoga mats and rope made out of plastic grocery bags. The "High Tide" was made out of 500 Tide detergent bottles. The boats raced 300 feet out into the lake and then returned to shore. Most made it but a few rescues were needed. Local businesses, colleges, a high school and other groups were among the "would be" sailors. The Lake Erie Boat Float was created to raise awareness of what one researcher calls a rapidly growing plague.
Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, is the first to admit that events like the Boat Float are a stunt to gain attention. He has been constructing plastic trash boats since 2003. In 2008, Eriksen and a colleague sailed across the Pacific Ocean, California to Hawaii on a raft, called JUNK, made of 15,000 plastic bottles to get his point across.
The "High Tide" was made out of 500 Tide detergent bottles floated in the Great Lakes Erie Boat Float.
"I would really like people to understand that we have this man made material, designed to last forever," states Eriksen. "We are making products from it and consuming products that are designed to be trash. We can find alternatives and stop using and go to something renewable and end this plastic plague."
What about recycling? Eriksen says it doesn't work. "Only 5 percent of manufactured plastic is being recycled, it is cheaper to get new oil to make new plastic than it is to recycle the old stuff." Eriksen insists we need to change our throw-away mentality, because there is no "away." Plastics travel from watersheds to rivers, lakes and eventually into the ocean. The Algalita Marine Research Foundation has determined the amount of plastic in the Earth's oceans has doubled within the last 10 years.
A dramatic example of the problem happened to Eriksen during his 88 day voyage on the raft JUNK. He caught a fish out of the ocean for dinner, only to find bits of plastic in the fish's stomach. "We are finding plastic pieces inside fish that we are harvesting to feed the world," said Eriksen.
Eriksen built his thirteenth plastic boat for the Boat Float, named the "COLA-Hoga." The materials were donated and local students helped build the craft. Eriksen came to Cleveland in October as the keynote speaker for the Northeast Ohio Environmental Awards presented by the Biodiversity Alliance.
"It's an amazing example of creativity using what we normally call trash to make something useful," said Eriksen.
For more information, visit www.algalita.org.
PLASTICS
- Americans buy an estimated 29.8 billion plastic water bottles every year.
- Nearly eight out of every 10 bottles will end up in a landfill.
- It is estimated that the production of plastics accounts for 4 percent of the energy consumption in the U.S.
- Less than 1 percent of all plastics is recycled. Therefore, almost all plastics are incinerated or end up in a landfill.
- More than 80 percent of U.S. households have access to a plastics recycling program through curbside or community drop-off centers. According to www. earth911.com.