After some asking around we find out that all the plastic which is collected on the beaches is thrown in the same landfill as the other trash of the island. Curious as we are, we head for the landfill. Nothing could have prepared us for what we saw when we arrived: an open dump with any kind of trash you can imagine is creating a new landscape. Thin layers of lava stones and ash are used to cover up the trash from time to time, but most of it is left in the open, ready to be taken away by the wind and blown straight into the ocean.
It makes me think of a passage I recently read in The World Without Us by Alan Weisman:
‘What does this mean for the ocean, the ecosystem, the future? All this plastic had appeared in barely more than 50 years. Would its chemical constituents or additives concentrate as they ascend the food chain, and alter evolution? Would it last long enough to enter the fossil record? Would geologists millions of years hence find Barbie doll parts embedded in conglomerates formed in seabed depositions? Would they be intact enough to be pieced together like dinosaur bones? Or would they decompose first, expelling hydrocarbons that would seep out of a vast Neptune’s graveyard fo eons to come, leaving fossilized imprints of Barbie and Ken hardened in stone for eons beyond?’
When we are all disgusted, totally depressed and ready to go, Joel finds this beautiful plastic bag: Ocean Blue (from a shop in the Azores). Oh irony!