All Things Considered - Midway atoll

I listened to a piece today on All Things Considered (NPR) about the Midway atoll. This is it in article form: Remote Waters Offer No Refuge from Plastic Trash , it was an interesting bit.

According to the U. S. government, an astonishing 50 tons of plastic arrive in Midways waters every year. If you can visualize this, the atoll is over 1,000 miles from the nearest city, has no infrastructure, and only a few dozen people living there. It is also a National Wildlife Refuge. And 50 tons of plastic is directed its way each year. Most of this plastic, approximately four-fifths, comes from the lands all around the Pacific Ocean. This is our trash from our streets, washed into our storm drains, washed into our watersheds and out into the ocean. And that's just the waste we can physically see, imagine if we could see the pesticides, fertilizers, pet waste and all of the other toxins that get washed into our watershed as well. The rest of the waste comes from cargo containers spilling out in stormy seas and from synthetic floats and other gear that is jettisoned illegally to avoid the cost of proper disposal in port. Midways' most copious resident, the Laysan albatross, pays a high price for this human ignorance. Of the 500,000 albatross chicks born there each year, approximately 40% die, mostly from dehydration or starvation. A two-year study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showed that chicks that died from those causes had twice as much plastic in their stomachs as those that died for other reasons. The picture above is the stomach contents of ONE dead Laysan albatross chick. Anyone who says we can't make a difference in the pollution problems of this world should think again. We DO make a difference, evidenced by 50 tons of trash rushing toward a small atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Let's make it a positive difference instead, though.