***100 Days of Summer Reading 2023***
Prompt: Book written by a Canadian author
Virtual 12 sided dice roll: 11
A clever title, for who hasn't heard of sealing a message into a bottle and hurling it into the ocean? But there is now a Great Pacific Garbage Patch that contains more than a few plastic bottles, sending us the message that we are a messy and wasteful species.
In all honesty, I can't tell how many people still don't know about ocean pollution, ocean warming, fish stock decline, the globalization of litter, and the threat of microplastics. Even knowing what I know, it's impossible to return from the grocery store without a plethora of plastic. I recycle what I can, but each community has its own rules for acceptable materials. Plus, I am given to understand that even many plastics sent for recycling get deflected into landfills. Some countries burn their plastic waste, but even when the burning produces energy for other things, it still releases carbon and toxins into the atmosphere. Some scientists are gallantly cultivating microbes that will eat plastic, but can they keep up with our production? Particularly horrifying was the chapter “The Plastisphere," which collated a lot of current research on the health consequences of plastic ingestion. Since it's in most tap water, we all get a dose. Thank goodness for her “Reframing Plastic" chapter, which provides some hope when I needed it!
As a regular listener to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, very little of the factual information was brand new to me—often there was a little more detail, which was good. What kept me reading was the memoir portion of the book, detailing the author's career in seabird research. That's something a younger me imagined doing, but I can see clearly now that I was not cut out for such an existence!
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