Plastic is, in human terms, forever. Almost all the plastic manufactured in the past 50 years (that’s 1 billion tons) still exists, somewhere out there in the environment.  Some of it is recycled, some buried in landfill, and some carried by rivers out to the ocean. Indeed, most marine pollution is plastic, originally dumped on land. Once in the ocean, it drifts into one of several mid-ocean gyres, or circulating currents. There are five of these in all, two in the Pacific Ocean.

Albatrosses breed on Midway Island within the North Pacific Oceanic Gyre. Parents ingest plastic — bottle caps, lighters –floating on the ocean and regurgitate this ersatz food to their chicks. The chicks often starve and die. Chris Jordan’s photographs of dead chicks illustrate the problem.

See Chris’s photographs:

• Chris Jordan: Message from the Gyre
  Photo essay of dead albatross chicks with bellies full of plastic. (If you don’t fancy looking at these grim pictures, take a look at the Monterey Bay Aquarium link below, which shows a jar full of plastic from just one bird.)
• Great Pacific Garbage Patch
  Wikipedia background information on the gyre and its pollution.
• Laysan albatross & plastics
  According to Monterey Bay Aquarium, 40% of Laysan albatross chicks die each year from plastic ingestion.
• The world without us
  This book by Alan Weisman includes a chapter on the longevity of plastics and their impacts on the environment.

There is no doubt the lonely bumblebee is the cutest bee, but cuteness just wasn’t powerful enough to save it from changing farm practices. The short-haired bumblebee is extinct in Britain. Lucky for the Brits that 48 of these bees emigrated to New Zealand in 1884. Here in New Zealand, they’re doing jolly well, so we’re sending some back to the Home Country, and Kentish farmers are preparing a clover feast to welcome them.

Read more about the bumblebee reintroduction:

• New Scientist
• Economist
• Guardian

Know your (introduced) New Zealand bumblebees:

• Bombus terrestris 
• Bombus hortorum
• Bombus subterraneus (the bee in question)
• Bombus ruderatus