To the Editor:The Graduate, Walter Brooke, playing the role of Mr McGuire, pulls a young Dustin Hoffman, playing the part of the graduate Benjamin Braddock, off to the side to offer him the secret to a great future, in one word he confides, "Plastics." Fifty years later Mr McGuire's words, however amusing and disjointed they seemed at the time, are in the present, more like a prophecy come true.

In the 1967 movie

For the past 50 years, plastic has become a major presence in our lives. Plastics are great, they're functional, practical, light in weight, inexpensive to produce and virtually indestructible. Everyone uses them so plastics of all kinds have multiplied exponentially as the worlds population has grown in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, we have gotten to the point where we have too much plastic and because of its near indestructible nature, it is essentially impossible to get rid of. We can bury it and fill our landfills to capacity, we can incinerate it and risk poisoning our air, we can attempt to recycle it, but according to National Geographic, research shows that only 9 percent is actually properly recycled - the rest ends landfills, and in nature. So what is the problem? Out of sight out of mind, why worry about it one might say.

Unfortunately, not all plastic ends up in a landfill. It is estimated that 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been created since the 1950s, mostly in disposable products. In 2010, scientists estimated, that 8 million metric tons of plastic had littered our oceans. I shudder to think what the updated figure is in 2018. My reason to shudder is because, plastic exposed in the ocean does slowly break down into micro plastic fragments. These fragments are then ingested by zooplankton, which are then ingested by larger fish so on up the food chain, of which we at the top are the ultimate recipients of this unexpected ingredient. There is also the harm that plastic does to birds, and marine animals whether they ingest it, mistaking it for food or get caught in these floating islands of debris that liter our oceans. (YouTube - Diver films a sea of plastic of the coast of Bali for a better visual).

What is to be done? We start at home with a conscious effort to cut down on how much plastic we use. Use reusable mugs; I credit my Starbucks mug with saving hundreds of paper cups (lined with plastic) and tops this past year. Stop using straws. Use reusable bags at the grocery store instead taking the plastic bags that they give you. We have all enjoyed the benefits of plastics for the past 50-plus years, but it has become excessive. We need to temper that excess and reflect on what another 50-plus years without curtailment of plastic could mean to us, our kids and the planet they inherit from us.

Alex Villamil

Antler Pine Road, Sandy Hook         March 9, 2018