Last week my 7-year-old son Jack came home from a field trip to our National Aquarium. He was ecstatic after seeing the baby loggerhead turtle up close and would not stop imitating the droning noises of the puffins and razorbills. He also came home with a whole new set of facts, including one that really surprised me.
“Plastics,” he told me, “take more than 1,000 years to biodegrade.” I had not realized it was quite this long. And when I did the math I realized that virtually every piece of plastic that has ever been made still exists in some shape or form on out planet.
