Article - Message in a Bottle

This 9 page article, by Charles Fishman, appeared in December 2007 in Fast Company Magazine.

Synopsis: Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion. A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence.

Read the full article here

Source: Fast Company Magazine

Kids Views on Marine Debris

Read letters from kids about marine debris:


Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency

Article - Tapped Out

This short article, Tapped Out, succinctly describes our wasteful use of plastic water bottles

Last year Americans spent nearly $11 billion on over 8 billion gallons of bottled water, and then tossed over 22 billion empty plastic bottles in the trash. In bottle production alone, the more than 70 million bottles of water consumed each day in the U.S. drain 1.5 million barrels of oil over the course of one year.

Check out the second page of the article for recommendations on sources for reusable "Better Bottles".

Source: National Geographic - Green Guide

Learning Guide - Turning the Tide on Trash

Educators, parents, students, and researchers can use “Turning the Tide on Trash” as they explore the serious impacts marine debris can have on wildlife, the environment, our well being, and our economy.

(Appropriate for Grades 1 through 12)

This 100 page learning guide is available as

• screen-quality-pdf (3.5Mb)
• print-quality-pdf (8.4Mb)

It was initially developed in 1992, and updated in 2007.

Source: NOAA - Marine Debris

Modbury, Great Britain's First Plastic Bag Free Town

In May 2007, every trader in Modbury, South Devon, joined together to make Modbury plastic bag free - the first town in the British Isles to do so.

• Watch this video - Message from Modbury on what motivated the change, and how they went about it.
• Visit their plastic facts page.

Source: Modbury - plasticbagfree.com

Book: Tracking Trash

This wonderful book's complete title is "Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion". It is part of the "Scientists in the Field" series aimed at kids 10 or older; but anyone can learn a lot from it.

You can probably find it at your local library or bookstore. The author is Loree Griffin Burns. Here are several places that describe it in more detail:

• Abby (the) Librarian
• Amazon
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt book description
• Powell's Books

Games - Keep Oceans Clean

The Keep Oceans Clean website lets you:

• explore the different marine debris
• see short movies about some marine debris and how it gets there
• make your own ecard
• play a cleanup game - though there's way too much debris to fully cleanup - we need to really pay attention to how to stop adding more!

Source: keepoceansclean.org

A partnership of:

• Environmental Defense Fund
• National Marine Sanctuary
• NOAA
• Department of Interior
• Advertising Council