Message In The Waves

One night while channel surfing, I came across a BBC documentary called, “Message In The Waves.” It was filmed in Hawaii and showed the impact of plastic debris & litter that ends up in the oceans and affects marine life as well as a native bird to the islands, the Laysan Albatross. Thanks to our “throwaway society”, these beautiful birds ingest lighters, golf balls, plastic drink tops, etc., as well as feed foreign objects to their young, mistaking it for food. After a period of time, the birds and chicks die from starvation or dehydration. It also showed turtles mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish and swallowing the debris, which eventually leads to them dying slow deaths by suffocation.

A camerawoman from the film, Rebecca Hosking, was so touched and saddened by what she saw over the course of filming, she returned home and started a movement to have all the establishments in her community, ban plastic bags. Click here to read about how she got Modbury to be the first town to ban plastic bags in the UK.

Mahalo to Abe Vandenberg, who co-created the original music for the film, along with Christopher Candito, and was kind enough to send me a copy of the documentary on DVD. I have watched it a couple times now and it has definitely made me think twice before buying unnecessary purchases that will later be tossed into a landfill or end up floating around in the ocean.

Posted by thuy