Naka Nathaniel: Big Plastic Has Left The Next Generation With A Big Problem

Naka Nathaniel spent much of his career as a journalist with The New York Times, helping launch NYTimes.com, covering war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the collapse of the second tower on 9/11. He lives in Waimea on the Big Island. Opinions are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Civil Beat’s views. You can reach him by email at nnathaniel@civilbeat.org.

The beach and the valley floor of Pololu are speckled with plastic that has washed ashore. If only a valley could sue those responsible.

POLOLU VALLEY, Hawaii Island — I’ve followed my son down the precarious trail into the northernmost of Hawaii island’s famed valleys many times. This time it’s the first full day of his spring break and he’s earnestly hunting his bête noire, his white whale, his pilikia nui.

He was back to resume the chase he began months ago. His quarry? A fishing net made of synthetic fibers sunk into the mud sands of the valley floor.

My son knows that Pololu Valley is a wahi pana, a sacred place. He feels especially drawn because of the moʻolelo, or legend, set here of our ancestor, Naeʻole, who helped carry a newborn child who would become Kamehameha from the clutches of rival chiefs who wanted to kill the child and upend the prophecy that the baby would unite the Hawaiian Islands.

Almost three centuries later, the beach and the valley floor of Pololu is speckled with a layer of plastic that has washed ashore. As part of his kuleana, my son loves to see how much plastic he can gather and hike out of the valley. It’s an endless process and there’s no good way to get ahead of this problem.

Growing up in the Marshall Islands, any time we’d find a piece of trash on the beach it’d be a treasure. We’d marvel at how the object had floated at least 3,000 miles to be washed ashore in the middle of the Pacific.

Sadly, that’s not the case for my son and his generation. We can’t escape the trash we’ve created in the last four decades. We are familiar with the stories […]

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