If you use exfoliating soaps, you might not know those little beads may be made of plastic — or think about what happens to them when they go down the drain.

But it’s on the minds of marine science researchers, as well as a major company.

Unilever, the company that makes Dove soaps, Vaseline, Pond’s skin cream and other personal care products, announced recently it’s phasing out the use of “plastic micro beads as a ‘scrub’ material” in its personal care products.

Read the entire article on CNN Online

John, we received your contributions for One Foot at a TIme and they are amazing. Give us a snippet of who you are, where do you live and what’s your 9 – 5?

Well, I started surfing when Dana Point was still a surf break and that whole episode shaped my outlook. After surfing the northwest in the mid 70′s I knew I wanted to live up here and I landed in Oregon in 1987. This part of the coast is a tough place to get consistent surf, but the environment and the surf community feels right for me. When I do venture south for jobs it doesn’t take long for me to miss home.

Right now I’m working for myself on small building projects with the emphasis on sustainable practices and high quality construction, often associated with the arts and artists. I make time for my own art work when I can. There’s not a whole lot of options on the Oregon coast.

When I first saw these pictures I was blown away. They are horrifically gorgeous. I love them visually but the fact that they are made up of plastic… makes me pause at the same time. What’s the story behind these?

As plastic debris breaks down on the beach it can become visually quite interesting. And the fact that so much of it is in our environment due to carelessness and over-consumption tells a story in itself. Using this material, basically a fossil fuel product, to depict sea life that’s threatened and endangered offers me the chance to address issues that have interested me for a long time.

The challenge is to create an image that draws the viewer in, captures the dignity of these creatures, but doesn’t hit you over the head with a guilt trip. I don’t foresee running out of inspiration anytime soon, particularly since the subject of endangered marine species is so urgent and compelling.

I’ve heard that you were one of the founders of a Surfrider chapter in Oregon, what was that like and why did you do it?

Sometime around 1991 a surfer from the University of Oregon called a meeting to talk about starting a chapter of Surfrider Foundation. It was the first one that I know of.

I was active in a local environmental organization called Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition and thought I would see a bunch of surfers at this meeting. Only about 5 people showed up and I didn’t recognize anybody.

We quickly drew in some of the dedicated surfers living in Eugene (which is in the valley) but the real break came when the US Forest Service decided to start charging people to drive through FS land to get to a popular surf break located on US Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers property. That was a great recruitment opportunity and when we won our court challenge, beating a major government agency, it was a David and Goliath moment.

Surfrider Foundation is uniquely placed to mobilize people and resources to accomplish things like that.

Tell us a bit about why One Foot at a Time interested you enough for you to create these works. What was the hook? What made you create this art out found pieces of plastic?

I took part in the One Foot At A Time campaign last year and it blew me away how much plastic is on our beaches.

I thought I was relatively observant, but we get these dense deposits of plastic marine debris that have clearly been in the water and on the beach a long time and I had never noticed.

I pick up a lot of plastic now.

That opportunity to combine my interest in art and the environment came at a perfect time for me. I had sort of stalled out in both areas and they’re so important. Coincidentally, I often get my news about sea life in distress from the Surfrider Soup online bulletins. Many people feel passionate about the perilous conditions that marine creatures are facing but it’s not always easy to find an outlet.

One of the things that characterizes Surfrider is the power of an individual engaging… and influencing other people. Who was the person that initially influenced you and have you seen others impacted by your work and/or your art?

Hmmm, I remember surfing Doheney way back in the day and hearing a surfer/shaper named John Wilson (he later took over one of the foam blank companies, maybe Foss Foam??) talking about sneaking up to Dana Point and pulling up the survey stakes for the ‘development’ about to take place there. But it really came home for me when I studied under Raymond Dasmann at UC Santa Cruz. He’s right up there with Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold. He wrote The Destruction of California and had been the Director of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature specializing in large predator habitat. He could see the collapse of ecosystems coming from a long ways off and it was a great burden on him. He told his students in 1978 we would see the ‘tipping point’ in our lifetimes.

Any last words?

Yeah, thanks Surfrider Foundation for all that you do.

I know surfing is many things to all sorts of people, but I would encourage folks to share the waves and focus on the positive things that surfing brings us all. Then maybe look for a way you can give something back.

[Interview by Surfrider Foundation CEO, Jim Moriarty]

Researchers were stunned to find that plastic trash has infiltrated even the most remote places on the planet – the arctic seafloor.

Read the whole story on The Mother Nature Network

Students at Olympic College Bremerton created an 18-foot baby gray whale from recycled materials.  The students took on the project after their art professor, Marie Weichman, heard about gray whale that washed ashore in Seattle.  Researchers discovered that the animal had a large number of plastic bags in it’s stomach.

The Whale Project opens Thursday and runs through October

Full story in the Spokesman Review.

CLICK HERE to see the full size infographic

On the same day a plastic bag ban went into effect, a challenge to the controversial law impacting grocery and other retail outlets across San Luis Obispo County was shot down by a SLO County Superior Court judge.

On Oct. 1, stores across the county stopped using the bags, which proponents of the law say are environmentally harmful, in lieu of selling reusable fabric bags. Stores may continue to sell paper bags, however, at a cost to the consumer of 10 cents each.

Read the whole story in the New Times

The Smithsonian.com reports that researchers collecting samples in the Southern Ocean (the waters that encircle Antarctica) have detected remarkably high levels of plastic pollutants in a habitat that was widely considered to be unspoiled.

“We had always assumed that this was a pristine environment, very little touched by human beings,” Chris Bowler, one of the team’s scientists, told The Guardian. ”The fact that we found these plastics is a sign that the reach of human beings is truly planetary in scale.”

Read more at The Smithsonian.com.

This female gray whale died recently after being entangled in discarded line.

Approximately one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year due to ingestion of, or entanglement in plastic.

Read the whole story in San Pedro News Pilot

According to the U.K. paper The Independent, British scientists have developed a technology that uses microwaves to turn plant-based waste, such as orange peels, into an eco-friendly plastic. Researchers have created a partnership with the juice-making industry in Brazil, and have launched the Orange Peel Exploitation Company to demonstrate the technology on a large scale.

“There is eight million tons of orange residue in Brazil. For every orange that’s squeezed to make juice, about half of it is wasted,” said James Clark, professor of green chemistry at the University of York and developer of the new approach.

Click here to read the entire article on the Sierra Star site