MCC Daily Tribune

Green Tip: Break Free from Plastic Pollution

Join the Sustainability Committee on Monday, October 23 to view the Smog of the Sea film in the Empire Room. This 30-minute video tells the tale of plastic pollution in our oceans. In 2016, marine scientist Marcus Eriksen invited renowned surfers Keith and Dan Malloy, musician Jack Johnson, spear fisher Kimi Werner, and bodysurfer Mark Cunningham to join him on a one-week journey through the Sargasso Sea to assess the fate of plastics in the world’s oceans.

Come see the “truth” of the ocean “garbage patches.” While most of us imagine some artificial island of plastics that could be removed from the ocean, the reality is that these patches are just huge sections of ocean with millions of pieces of plastic floating on or near the surface. Matthias Egger, the head of environmental and social affairs at The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit developing technologies to rid the oceans of plastic told CNN in April 2023, “You can think of it like the night sky. If you look up at night, you see all those white dots, that’s essentially what you see in the garbage patch. It’s not that dense, but there are a lot of them … out there, you start seeing more and more plastic the longer you look.”

Ann Penwarden
Sustainability Steering Committee
10/19/2023