If you’ve taken the FilterForGood pledge,** you likely already know many ways disposable plastic wreaks havoc on the environment: clogged drainage pipes, suffocating sea turtles, starving birds, and a lot more. What I find really frightening about plastic, however, is how much we don’t know.

We know, for example, that a lot of our plastic waste ends up in the oceans, getting carried into slow-moving currents — a.k.a. gyres — where the swirl around in a plasticky soup getting broken up into very tiny particles. We don’t know, however, how much plastic’s in these gyres — or how long these tiny plastic particles stick around.

We also know that plastic pellets swirling in water tends to pick up contaminants like PCBs and DDTs — and that birds and fish often eat these pellets mistaking them for food. But we don’t know how concerned we should be about human consumption of birds and fish that have eaten these polluted pellets.

These are the questions that a new project called 5 Gyres** seeks to begin answering by launching the first global study on plastic marine pollution. The research efforts kicked off in early January, when the 5 Gyres crew set sail from the U.S. Virgin Islands!

This begins the first of two research expeditions across the North Atlantic Gyre to “gather international data on plastic pollution, collecting surface samples and foraging fish for evidence of plastic ingestion.” The 5 Gyres crew is blogging their trip,** detailing what they’re seeing in posts and photos as they make their way across the Sargasso Sea before stopping in Bermuda to give public lectures with local NGOs, then sailing on to the Azores.

The crew will sail again in August, this time to study the South Atlantic Gyre, traveling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Cape Town, South Africa. After the trips, 5 Gyres will launch a public education campaign called “The Last Straw,” which includes a 2000-mile North America East Coast cycling/speaking tour to lecture about the Atlantic plastic soup, as well as a European trip down the Seine River and across the English Channel in STRA, a boat that’s to be built from a quarter-million plastic straws in Paris, France.

Three groups — the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Livable Legacy, and Pangaea Explorations — are behind 5 Gyres, which has a wonderfully informative website with a great overview on the problem of plastic pollution.** Even more exciting is 5 Gyres’ blog,** maintained by the crew that’s sailing now!

Follow the blog to see videos and photographs of the research as its being done — and remember your reusable bag and bottle** to avoid creating more disposable plastic pollution!

Photos via 5 Gyres

**You are leaving the FilterForGood Web site. The Brita Products® Company is not responsible for the content or data collection of that independent site.