Of all the human-related threats to our planet, one has received surprisingly little attention given its magnitude. Perhaps it’s because few people see the massive islands of plastic swirling in the oceans.

CBC columnist Heather Mallick described one such island in the Pacific Ocean as “a hideous chyme stretching and pulsing in the sea like an underwater gob of spiky phlegm.”

In “Waves of disaster”, a feature article in this week’s Georgia Straight, Vancouver writer Roberta Staley provides more detail: “A briny Brobdingnagian mass of bobbing fishing line and nets, computers, bags, shampoo caps, toothbrushes, tires, bottles, diapers, tampon tubes, and plastic containers, the Garbage Patch is estimated to be at least 620,000 square kilometres—about 20 times the size of Vancouver Island—and 30 metres deep.”

The article attempts to get to the bottom of questions such as: “How did plastic come to rend the natural cycle of the ocean, the womb of Earth whence all life, from plants to insects to humans, sprang, perhaps four billion years ago? And what are the implications for humans as our oceans are churned into a soup of chemical and plastic?”

It’s a disturbing but important issue that needs to be understood by the public, as it’s something we’ve all played a role in creating, and a problem that we all have a stake in solving.