Plastic Paradise Movie Screening
Presented by: Office of Sustainability and Eco-Reps
Tuesday April 21st 7pm
Whitaker Lab 303
On Tuesday April 21st as part of our Earth Week celebration, the Office of Sustainability and Eco-reps will be hosting a screening of Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The screening will be held in Whitaker 303 at 7pm, and will be accompanied by refreshments and information about the global plastic pollution problem.
About the movie:
99.9% of all plastic ever made still exists today, so where does it all go? The reality is that plastic pollution ends up in either landfills or oceans, and stays there. Plastic's lifetime of 500-1000 years, coupled with the exponentially increasing production of plastic since the 1950's has lead to a massive accumulation of waste plastic. In 1997 the results of this accumulation were discovered when an enormous stretch of debris floating in the ocean was found that has since been dubbed The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Oceanic pollution, namely plastic debris (often of microscopic size), gathers in regions of circulating current in the ocean known as gyres. There are five major oceanic gyres on earth, however this movie focuses on the largest of the five, the North Pacific Gyre. Director Angela Sun travels to some of the most remote places on earth to learn more about how plastic pollution affects marine ecosystems and what this means for the future of our oceans and ultimately, our planet.
