Yesterday I watched a film. It was only 20 minutes long, and it was a news report from 2008: like most reporting (and I am a journalist, so this I know) it was probably forgotten five minutes after it's broadcast.
It was set in the Pacific atoll of Midway (site of the famous battle): about as idyllic as you can get, 2000 miles from any other land and the picture-postcard white sands, azure blue sea.. you get the picture.
It's also in the middle of what's known as the North Pacific Garbage Patch.
The plastic that washes up here is instantly recognisable: disposable cigarette lighters, scraps of plastic packaging, washing up bowls, the back of a television set. This is where our everyday plastic waste ends up: this is where we mean by 'away' when we throw away.
The albatrosses who live on the island think disposable cigarette lighters are squid, and feed them to their chicks. At one point in the film, David Shukman (the reporter) helps pull a green plastic hook from the beak of one chick: on the end is a barely-recognisable plastic net. It was with a jolt that I realised that I use those plastic nets all the time: it's what your garlic comes in when you buy it from the supermarket. It would have killed that chick, given time.
It is common to find the carcasses of seabirds with stomachs full of plastic bottle caps, netting, toothbrushes, and unnameable scraps of plastic which have floated thousands of miles from our supermarkets and rubbish bins and thoughtless lives to kill animals and cover beautiful places with garbage.
Why should we care about a bunch of albatrosses on a far-off island nobody lives on?
Well: you may not. I do. I really care. I love animals, and I don't want anything I do to cause suffering. I also don't want 'away' to become 'here'. I don't want our island, or anyone's island, to become a garbage patch. And the rate we're throwing away plastic, that's exactly what is going to happen.
You can see a part of David Shukman's report here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7314240.stm
And for the bits David Shukman couldn't show: watch this. It says much the same thing. Just remember, while you're watching it, that this is your rubbish.
This, and David Shukman's report, broke my heart to watch, and made me think so deeply about the way I live. I'm an average, ordinary mum living an average, ordinary, Western life. I'm vaguely eco-conscious: I do try to think about the impact I have on the world.
But I look around my house with new eyes after watching this film and see room after room filled with plastic. It makes me realise just how dependent on this material we've become. So I've decided to try to find out more about it: this thing we've made which we value so highly there is barely an area of our lives in which it is not found somewhere.
I may not ever be able to live a plastic-free life: I may even decide plastic is a necessary evil. I might find that all the above hand-wringing about North Pacific atolls and albatrosses is a lot of emotional overkill. I do, however, want to start thinking about this most pervasive yet least noticed area of my modern life, and work out what its value and impact is on the world. If we're going to kill albatrosses for it, it ought to be worth the sacrifice, don't you think?
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