Did you ever stop and wonder, like I have, what happens to the tons of garbage we produce every day? Sure, some of it gets recycled. And some of it gets burned. And some of it ends up in a landfill. But a lot of it ends up in the ocean. In fact, more than a million pounds of plastic is dumped into the ocean every hour. Yes, read that again, over one million pounds of plastic goes into the ocean every hour.

Right now there is a great Pacific Ocean garbage patch that is believed to contain more than 3 million tons of plastic. And there is another patch in the Atlantic Ocean and one in the Indian Ocean.

What does this mean for the seals, dolphins, fish, whales and other animals? It means a lot of these animals are eating plastic. That plastic ends up in their stomachs. And we all know plastic is not a nutritious food source. I met a beautiful seal who survived a bad diet of plastic because she was rescued in time. Her photo and the garbage which came out of her stomach is above. Sadly, many other seals and animals are not as lucky. They die.

So, what can you do? What can I do? Our garbage goes away somewhere. When you think about it, garbage never really goes away. It just gets transported to another location. I look at my own consumption patterns. I even read about someone who carried his garbage around with him everywhere he went for several weeks. You can bet that he bought less and had a re-usable water bottle. What if we all did that? What if we stopped buying so many things? What if we stopped using and producing plastic? What if we changed our ways? Each one of us makes a difference. Each and every one of our actions counts.