Save a Dollar Now...Eschew Plastic

                                              Jeannette's three dollars  worth....

It is often true of me that I don't bother to look further into many issues of life.  This  morning  Nature ID  featured a "California Sand Dollar."   As she says,  " I'm assuming most people are okay simply knowing it's a sand dollar and don't bother to look any further as to what kind of animal this is. I've included the best links I could find..." 

So for me, as for many people, a sand dollar is a sand dollar by any other name, but today I  read further and learned that the diet of Dendraster excentricus, aka, the Pacific sand dollar, includes "particulate detritus. "

Thinking of the mineral rich soup of the ocean  reminded me of reading I have done off and on about plastic. What happens to plastic when its short life of convenience to us is over and its long life of degradation begins?  One place plastic keeps showing up is in the ocean; not only in visible floating pieces that beach combers can pop back into the garbage when bottles and bags and plastic parts wash up....but in teeny tiny confetti, alphabet soup down to microscopic molecular goo size pieces that ocean life ingests when they are after the mineral rich organic detritus that is their right fare.


So I have been trying to eschew plastic.  You know, eschew as in abstain from, refrain from, give up, forgo, shun, renounce, steer clear of, have nothing to do with, relinquish, reject, forswear...
( aren't dictionaries fun books?) 


It isn't easy, and all I can claim is to have made some progress...but  I keep having experiences that remind to be more careful what I create a demand for by being careful what I purchase. 

   This trip to the local dump...it was a good reminder.
As their common name implies  Pacific sand dollars can be found from  Baja California to Alaska.   

  For many people it is a bit of thrill, a touchstone, a reminder of creation's beauty and mystery to find a fragile ornate exoskeleton  in the tide line on a sandy beach.  


 So think about saving a dollar...I don't have any gold dollars to photograph for you, but I have many golden moments in life courtesy of nature's beauty and bounty.
From land's perspective we see only a hint of all the life in the sea.  When I think of how ubiquitous  plastic is  becoming in the world's waters, it spurs me on to keep on reducing my use of vessels and objects that I'll some day have to throw away.

And by the way...where is "away" anyway?