Single-use bottles and bottle caps are among the most common things we find on Kehoe Beach. They come from our neighborhoods and from thousands of miles across the sea. Ocean currents are the great conveyors bringing us debris from all around the Pacific Rim. We find telltale product labels from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, India, even Russia and our bottles from the San Francisco Bay end up on distant shores.
In one day we found 27 drink bottles from Asia including one from the 2008 Beijing Olympics that took a four year trans-Pacific journey, arriving on Kehoe Beach in 2012 just in time for the London Olympics. The surface of the bottle is embossed with summer sports: swimming, archery.
Water bottles are one of the most prevalent and most damaging plastics in the environment—and so easily replaced by adopting new habits. Carry a reusable bottle; tap water is more rigorously monitored than bottled water.
We propose a new addition to the 2016 Olympic medal events — the plastic water bottle transport. How many days will it take a bottle to float from Rio to Kehoe?
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