From trash to treasure on the Oregon coast

(August 3, 2018) A lot of trash ends in the ocean. That includes nearly 9 tons of plastic, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That organization predicts that the ocean will have more plastic than fish (by weight) by the year 2050.

Some of this plastic ends up on the Oregon coast. Groups of people try to clean up the beaches, but the trash usually goes to landfills. For example, the nonprofit organization SOLVE collected more than 200,000 pounds of trash along Oregon's coast, including 4,164 cigarette butts.

An artist named Pooka Rice is trying something different. She turns some of the beach trash into treasure. She makes interesting jewelry from the things that she finds on the beach. People often stop her to admire her jewelry. She uses it as a way to start a conversation with them about plastic pollution. “There’s still a lot of people out there that are not aware of issues surrounding plastic pollution,” she says.

Every month, Rice looks through the sand to collect and record what people leave behind. In July, she spent an hour with seven volunteers near Haystack Rock. They collected a trash bag full of waste, including broken glass, beach toys, bandages, a soda can, a beach towel, socks, and a lot of plastic pieces. Plastic things, such as wrappers, bottle caps, and straws, are a large problem because animals often try to eat it or they get stuck in it.

Angela Haseltine Pozzi is another artist with a similar idea. She works farther south near Bandon, Oregon. She also uses plastic trash that washes ashore. However, she doesn't make jewelry. She makes huge sculptures of sea life. One sculpture is a great white shark made partly of bottle caps and beach toys. Another is a jellyfish made mostly of water bottles. "I went to the ocean to heal," she says.

Pozzi's artwork is big because ocean pollution is a big problem, she says. Signs next to each piece of art describe ways to reduce the problem. One suggestion is to stop using plastic straws. Another is to stop using water in plastic bottles.