Plastic Soup

Dream Team

Sunday was a day without engagements–a day when we reflect on everything that had gone the week before, and all the people that we met.

I realized that all the people I had met have never spoken to each other. Imagine if we could bring all of them together … Certainly then a solution for the plastic waste would be very close!

At the head of such a Plastic Soup Dream Team would naturally be Maria Westerbos–the person who conceived A Convenient Truth, and who is a walking energy-explosion. At her side, we need the expert in the field of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Charles Moore, himself.

Then there are the people who all personify some part of the solution: Jackie Caddick of Liverpool’s Water Witch who helps in designing the right plastic-dredging ship. Michael Biddle of MBA Polymers, who thought up the best way to process the dredged-up plastic into new plastic or fuel. Peter Prows, the young and talented lawyer who specializes in the Law of the Sea, and who has established a global network of lawyers to address authorities on their responsibilities. Jay Golden of Gorilla in the Greenhouse, who will be the head of the department that will storm the world via multi-media. Rudolph Eilander whose floating island will be the base of operations for the plastic soup clean-up campaign.

Of course, I can take part as well in the writing down of everything; the publisher to publish it; and the baby to inspire everyone–since we do this for her generation.

Indispensable is Dave Cooper, the passionate translator, who has thrown himself into the fray of the plastic soup, providing an inexhaustible source of suggestions and representing the world on his own as a South African-Rhodesian with a Yorkshire sense of humor and a heart for San Francisco. Together with his partner and co-translator Vince he makes the Dream Team complete.

That is to say, complete … But we have only finished a quarter of our journey. We will undoubtedly meet more visionaries, experts, and designers to include on our Dream Team.

We can all get to work at Jack O’Neill’s house. In that three-story wooden dream house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean above Santa Cruz, we first develop a plan to prevent any more plastic ending up in the sea, and then start cleaning it up.

Before you know it, hundreds of Dream Team boats will sail through the plastic soup, manned by dreamers like us believing that dreams can come true.

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