Watershed Wonders - "Waste to Waves"
2010 "Waste to Waves" Mississippi Tour
Dr. Marcus Eriksen recently spent more than a month traveling to sites along the Mississippi River and visiting schools and public audiences, educating them about plastic marine debris. Some of the objectives of the tour were to create a high-quality, accurate education program in conjunction with the existing Watershed Wonders series, reaching 100,000 children while encouraging educational institutions along the Mississippi River to implement their own Plastics Are Forever program. In addition, he hoped to inspire children to adopt recycling projects, such as beach cleanups, neighborhood recycling programs and other environmental campaigns.
The tour included the following locations:
Bemidji Science Center - Bemidji, MN - September 24-27
Science Museum of Minnesota - Minneapolis, MN - October 1-4
Nat. Miss. River Museum and Aquarium, Iowa - October 8-10
St. Louis Science Center, Missouri - October 15-18
Children's Museum of Memphis - Memphis, TN - October 22-25
Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, La. - October 29 - November 1
On exhibit was the Bottle Rocket, a floating contraption that included 230 plastic bottles that originally travelled 2000 miles down the Mississippi River back in 2003. Also on exhibit were kiosks made from doors salvaged from Hurricane Katrina which describe the plastic pollution issue using photographs and artifacts. They also helped explain what can be done to eliminate the problem of widespread pollution and how Algalita is working on the issue.
Each museum and school that was visited received a copy of Watershed Wonders: A Plastic Bottle Journey Down the Mississippi River. The book includes a 20-minute documentary on DVD. See our other educational items on Watershed Wonders.
Marcus Eriksen, Anna Cummins and Marieta Francis
were on hand to tell the public about
the impact of plastic pollution on the
world's oceans, via our watersheds
About the first Bottle Rocket voyage, as told by Dr. Marcus Eriksen
In 2003 I paddled up to the National Mississippi Museum and Aquarium to take a break from rafting the Mississippi. I stayed for a week and talked with visitors about what it’s like to raft the river. Now, 7 years later, it’s the same conversation, but I’ve added what I’ve learned about plastic. 
So what would have happened if my 2000-mile journey had not ended in the Gulf of Mexico? The Bottle Rocket would have drifted into the Loop Current, a mini-gyre in the Gulf. From there the Gulf Stream, a river of warm water that feeds the Atlantic Ocean, would have taken the Bottle Rocket around Florida, along the east coast of North America and into the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. It would sit there for years, while the metal oxidized and wood decomposed, leaving the remaining plastic to persist.
In 2010 Algalita collaborated in an expedition to the North Atlantic to study plastic pollution. We possibly would have found the bottle caps from the Bottle Rocket still floating in that gyre.
