Whether you enjoy poke, sushi or ice cream—you already eat seaweed and seaweed-derived products. Locally known as limu or ogo, these marine algae are vital to the environment, culturally important, and have serious economic value.
Polluted runoff, the often-untreated murky brown water that oozes out into Maui’s ocean after every large storm, contains a toxic stew of oil, gas, fertilizers, pesticides, pharmaceuticals along with plastics, animal waste, detritus, sand, soil and rocks.
At best 10% of US plastic waste gets recycled. Another 13% gets burned, sometimes to generate electricity. Most of the remaining plastic is buried in landfills, but each year at least 1 billion pounds of plastic finds its way into our oceans.