An orange bottle cap. A yellow straw. Half of a thumbprint-sized
hollow green sphere. A triangular, blue, thick chunk. My 6-year-
old daughter and I were beachcombing at Polihale Beach on the
west shore of Kaua'i. We followed a line of plastic bits washed
up at a high tide line. Her assignment was to collect 100 of
something. The collection began with shells, bits of coral, and
an occasional piece of beach glass. Somehow, the task turned to
collecting a rainbow of plastic debris. We made arching rows of
10 of each color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple,
black, white, pink and gray. Purples were the hardest to find,
white plastic the most common. My 3-year-old son ran down the
sand dune from our camping spot and started playing with other
plastic bits and chunks. Two bottle cap wheels and a black
trapezoid made a car, reminiscent of a preschool collage
project. We played a guessing game, "What was this a part of?"
"Where do you suppose this came from?" A lawn chair in Japan. A
laundry basket in Califor