In a remote part of the Pacific Ocean just 400 miles off the coast of California sits the world’s largest congregation of our wasteful consumption patterns. Commonly referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, it is a large body of floating debris trapped by the current of the North Pacific Gyre. Most alarming, the debris consists mainly of plastics. The bulk of it is not large pieces but barely visible and microscopic fragments. For years, environmentalists, scientists and researchers didn’t think it was possible to clean up. In 2009, Project Kaisei turned the tide and began ...Read More »

In order for water challenges to be properly addressed, there is a need for regional and national dialogues that bring together the major users of water that include government, municipalities, agriculturists, and industrial users. Needed political change can be more easily built when there is a broader understanding of some of the problems that each sector faces. At the forefront of these issues, Margaret Catley-Carlson (pictured) has served as President of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) from 1983 to 1989 and of the Population Council from 1991 to 1999. Her professional career ...Read More »

AlJazeera's People & Power series investigates the destruction of Ethiopia's once beautiful Lake Koka and the tragic effects reaped upon the local population.  A country-wide economic boom and associated industrial growth has led to massive pollution of lakes and rivers under Ethiopia’s lax environmental laws.  Lake Koka is an unfortunate victim of this trend: once the source of irrigation and clean drinking water, it is now considered one the most polluted lakes in the world as local industry distributes effluent directly into the water.  As increasing numbers of the 17,000 Koka townspeople die from cancer and illnesses related to the ...Read More »

Not-For-Profit Project Vortex's mission is to encourage the functional reuse of oceanic plastic debris, through art and design. Currently they have partnered with seven artists, each of whom is showcasing their works at Lumenhouse Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The artists all use as their medium non-biodegradable trash gathered from the found environment, such plastic from the thousand-mile long “convergence zones” (ocean currents that naturally collect trash in their massive whirlpool-like circular eddies). Increasing awareness of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for example, which has an equivalent footprint to the state of Texas and contains trillions of 5mm plastic bits ...Read More »