Cabbage Patch vs. Garbage Patch

I got to thinking today how wasteful our society really is (again). Think about the layers of packaging to get to a toothbrush- plastic outerwrap, cardboard box, and finally, the tricky little plastic/ cardboard container. Or a microwave- massive amounts of styrofoam, plastic wrapped, with every little cord indivicually wrapped, and even the instructions! Why?? Is it all necessary? And what would happen if we reduced out effect on our growing and growing garbage facilities?

And by garbage facilities, we are not limited to our first thought of the
typical garbage waste management sites. No, there are at least three "garbage
islands" floating around in our oceans- known as the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch, the North Atlantic Garbage Patch and the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch.
While it is not officially known how large these islands of garbage are,
estimated sizes anywhere from double the size of Texas, with densities perhaps
from 200,000- 335,000 pieces of plastic per kilometre squared. Regardless of
size, this is disgusting.

Is it possible in today's society to make choices that reduce the amount of
waste we personally put out? How about making a conscious decision to not buy
the individually wrapped fruits and veggies? Or bringing re-useable bags to the 
grocery store instead of using 15 bags? Sometimes it's the little decisions
we make daily that will make a difference in our life. And day by day, reducing
our own waste and re-using and recycling, we'll make that difference. Sometimes,
we might have to sacrifice, whether it is collecting your own tuna cans and
bringing them home from your work because they do not have recycling, or not
buying that "bulk" box of raisins you always wanted because the plastic wrapped
cardboard box containing the 20 plastic wrapped cardboard boxes of plastic
wrapped raisins, complete with 15 raisins each. Just slap on "organic", and it's
all good, right? Wrong. Think about what you are buying. Be aware of it, and
remind others too. Sometimes, people just are obvilious to certain habits until
they are made aware of what their actions actually do. I can guarantee you
people would think twice about buying their Evian water if they went for a scuba
trip to a Garbage Island. Let's try and keep our world clean, starting today.
What are you gonna do?