Junk Raft

inSpirit: The UU Book and Gift Shop Verified independent store

→

Over the past several years, the news media has brought the “Great Pacific garbage patch”—that famous Texas-sized patch of litter swirling in the ocean—into the public consciousnes s. When Marcus Eriksen co-founded the 5 Gyres Institute and set out to study marine pollution, he found that the reality is even more dire: instead of a stable mass of litter, he discovered that a “plastic smog” of microparticles permeates the world’s oceans, defying easy clean-up efforts. What’s more, these microplastics have seeped into the food chain, threatening marine animals and humans alike.Far from being a gloomy treatise on an environmental catastrophe, Junk Raft tells the exciting story of Eriksen’s fight to raise awareness and solve the problem of plastic pollution. Readers follow Eriksen on his voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii aboard his homemade raft, and along the way he recounts his successful efforts to fight corporate influence and demand that plastics producers take responsibility for a problem they’ve created. Eriksen provides concrete, actionable solutions and an empowering message that it’s up to bold activists and citizen scientists to challenge the status quo for the sake of the planet. Show more