#PlanetOrPlastic I Did This
Swimming in an ocean, trying to see marine life, yet only spotting water bottles just like the one you drank during lunch. That plastic bag over there, just like the one that held your ham and cheese sandwich yesterday, now floats around the water. Milk jugs floating around, the cap lost and the insides filled with trapped fish, unable to see the hole at the top. A stingray is trying to navigate the waters, the only living thing in sight, yet keeps running into plastic things everywhere. A sheet of plastic like what wrapped that shipment of supplies you saw at Sam’s Club. When will it end? Ducks nearby that park your kids go to are choking by spiral bracelets not unlike the one you use to hold that key you always forget about otherwise. Lanyard tags holding plastic cards inside, depicting forgotten jobs and positions, are around the bodies of sea lions that guard the rocks breaking the water’s surface.Why are you wearing those flippers? Most of them are made plastic; you don’t like how rubber feels on your bare foot. It disgusts you how you depend on this material, thoughts of how your flippers will add to this skillet of plastic, metal, rubber, and various other materials drop your stomach. What’s that to your left? A soda can, just like what you drank on the way to the diving sight. Rubber bracelets are tightening around baby squids this moment, and you are watching. Crabs try living in discarded disposable cups, only to find that the jagged edges from the wear and tear against sand, rocks, and teeth thinking it’s food cut into its body. Dead animals because of you throwing away plastic bags, metal cans, and lost bracelets are just floating everywhere. You did this.
Why did you even go on this trip? To learn what you and your friends are a part of. You will start buying biodegradable things, start reusing things that can harm animals. As soon as you get back home, you will go through your trash.