If saving trees isn't enough to get you to stop using plastic bags, the fact that there is a toxic plastic gathering — twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean — should probably do the trick. This isn't just about saving the environment. This is about saving ourselves.

"Plastic Ocean" by Susan Casey (in the February issue of Best Life) tells the story of Capt. Charles Moore, who found this strange no-man's land in August of 1997, and has been studying it ever since. This accumulation of junk is not here by accident, but because of currents. This area is known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a becalmed area where currents gather.

Not only are there ubiquitous plastic bags, there are also less usual things, such as tires, traffic cones and bath toys. Unless you burn it and release harmful chemicals into the air, plastic stays around. Most of it is not recyclable, and the types that are can only be recycled partially.

Throwing plastic out is easy and painless; though we know it has to go somewhere, we rarely think about the place in which it actually ends up — not buried in some landfill miles from nowhere or under a mountain, but in the middle of the ocean where it is eaten by fish and eventually by many of us. Fish eat tiny pieces of plastic, which are showing up more often in our oceans.

Plastic is a new creation and its effects on us are not entirely known, but things aren't looking good. Casey reports that some plastic ingredients "cause liver and thyroid toxicity, reproductive problems and memory loss in preliminary animal studies." And plastic is everywhere. We wear it, use it to package our food and take baths with little ducks made of it. It is time to find an alternative, or several. Glass can easily be heated and reused and does not leach dangerous chemicals into the water or food.

This problem will not be easily solved. We can't drain the ocean. But we can be more aware of what we buy and where we throw it when we are done. We can realize that the plastic bottle we bought to drink 16 ounces of water and threw out will outlast us and do harm in the process.