I saw this picture shared on a friend’s Facebook timeline just a few minutes ago. It’s a beautiful piece of photo-manip, and it touches a global issue that I feel strongly about so I wanted to put up my very own ‘Public Service Announcement’ post here on the blog. I’ll just copy what I wrote when I also shared it on my Facebook profile:

You see a plastic bottle rolling in the foamy surf along the beach. You don’t pick it up – it’s just ONE bottle, right? No harm. Someone else’s business, someone else will pick up that plastic sweet wrapper and properly discard it.

Multiply this by the millions of people who head to the beach for a stroll, a swim, a picnic – and ignore that one piece of plastic they see floating away into the ocean.

The garbage floats away, slowly but surely breaking down into tiny polymers, builds up and collects, such as that seen in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (READ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch)

So what? The rubbish has disappeared from the coastline, away from the naked eye – out of sight out of mind. It’s not there anymore, and thus, no harm. The ocean is as blue as ever, the waters clear.

But it’s not gone. These toxic particles are ingested by marine life – fish, jellyfish…which are then ingested by larger fish. And we humans, glutton king of the entire food chain, reap the sea of its resource to fill our plates with protein-rich, delicious seafood that we love oh so much. Laden with toxic chemicals, that is.

And you wonder why we get sick. You worry about pesticide on your farm-grown vegetables when you yourself are feeding toxins into your seafood.

Don’t turn a blind eye to that little plastic bottle cap you see half-buried in the sand. Pick it up. It does make a difference.

I wasn’t sure where the photo’s original source was from initially, as this was not mentioned on the initial Facebook post my friend shared. Did a bit of Googling and hopefully I’ve correctly traced it to the original campaign, thus enabling me to rightfully credit the picture’s copyright owner:

Advertisers Without Borders
Title: Just Because You Can’t See It, Doesn’t Mean It Isn’t There
Creative & Art Dir: Ferdi Rizkiyanto
Digital Imaging: Ferdi Rizkiyanto
Images: stock photos

Soundtrack: Ellie Goulding – Salt Skin
Mood: Stirred
Location: Bedroom, Wellington, New Zealand
Random thought: Need to check and update tomorrow’s to-do list