December 31, 2011  Maine Voices: In Maine and around the world,
oceans, shores filling with plastic  Recycling won't do much to
help. To reduce the burden, we need to use and waste less
plastic.   SACO - Toothbrushes, golf balls, glue-sticks,
pacifiers, lip balm, kids' toys, deodorant roller balls, combs,
printer cartridges, pens and markers, pregnancy tests, clothes
pins.  These are just some of the ordinary plastic household
items found inside the stomachs of dead albatross on Midway, a
remote island chain in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. Every
year, thousands of albatross die from consuming plastics that
have floated in on the waves. Midway lies 1,200 miles from
civilization.  This is just one heartbreaking -- and completely
predictable -- result of a plasticized global culture.  By now
most people have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- the
swirl of plastics floating in the deep ocean, far from land.
Midway and Kamilo Beach, Hawaii, are its poster children.  But
what most people don't know is t