Sister Blog: Small Business Innovation is Mushrooming

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EPA Connect, the official blog of EPA’s leadership, recently shared a post featuring Ecovative, one of our favorite success stories!

Small Business Innovation is Mushrooming

By Judith Enck

Sometimes I worry that one of the enduring manmade wonders of our time will be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You know the Garbage Patch – the huge concentration of marine debris (mostly plastics) floating in the Pacific Ocean. It may still be there centuries from now. I wonder if a thousand years from now, tourists will visit the Garbage Patch the way we do the Roman Coliseum or the Pyramids. They’ll take pictures and stand there with their mouths agape wondering “how could they let this happen?”

Personally, I’m hopeful we can reduce the “greatness” of the garbage patch – and solve many of our other waste disposal problems – by reducing packaging or at least making it more sustainable.

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Oct 26, 2012

Of Many, We Are One

albatross, Chris Jordan, environment, garbage, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Pacific ocean, plastic, State of the Environment 0 Comments

By Jeanethe Falvey

My head was buzzing. I felt enlivened with the energy of possibility, bursting to share what I saw.

I recently had the opportunity to meet renowned artist Chris Jordan and we began a conversation that I’m eager to continue. In his artwork, our individual choices are exposed in their collective enormity. Look closer into this ocean vista and you’ll see that it is only the plastic bottles we use in the United States every five minutes. By facing the simplicity and the magnitude of his images, deflecting our own part is not so easy.

I sat there thinking, this is what it takes isn’t it? “Out of sight, out of mind” stops here.

He spoke of the human ability to comprehend numbers. How easily we are overwhelmed, deflect feeling, and turn away. His words resonated strongly: “instead of hope, let yourself feel and comprehend. Act passionately as individuals and we can shift the collective enormity of our choices toward a different outcome.”

Over one million organizations are working for a better world, just look closer into e pluribus unum. Of many, we are one indeed.

His latest work documents Midway Island’s stunning albatrosses as they face a new and lifeless predator: plastic food. The images bring incredible sadness, but someone else did not create this tragedy. Will we turn away?

Ever since I first heard of the garbage in our oceans, it has been on fire in my heart. Our things – created, used, tossed – are collecting by wind and current into places far out of mind, but not out of sight.

The Pacific garbage ‘patch’ is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. Imagine, walking across just one length of Texas seeing nothing but plastic, fishing nets, your trash multiplied by millions?

This is an opportunity waiting. Thankfully, if we choose to see, we have the technology. If we choose to feel, we have the science to understand the gravity. If we choose to act, we are individually equipped with choices, and collectively equipped to make a difference.

As Chris spoke, he said that if there were a single place on earth where all of our garbage went, we could stare and be stunned that it was a mountain larger than Everest, and maybe then we would collectively change. Maybe, this is that mountain.

About the author: Jeanethe Falvey writes from EPA’s Office of External Affairs and Environmental Education, as the project-lead for Pick 5 and the State of the Environment, two projects geared towards learning, sharing and gaining a greater collective connection to our environment.