Angela, CUR- Containers

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It seems the entire month of January I've had a cold, so I've been doing my research from the comfort of my couch. To my delight, I came across "Moby-Duck" written by Donovan Hohn. As part of my project presentation regarding Ocean Plastic on Florida's Beaches, I explained how plastic ends up in the ocean, which includes loss of containers from cargo ships, and the example I used was that of almost 29,000 plastic bath tub toys that fell off a ship back in 1992. In "Moby-Duck", Mr. Hohn, a teacher turned explorer, recounts his adventure tracking the route these plastic toys may have taken. 

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Something addressed in the book is the regular loss of cargo ships; about one a week if I recollect correctly, but I was a bit feverish so did some online research. Here I thought maybe one or two ships a year lose a couple of containers, however, while a lot of publicized estimates without sources state around 10,000 containers lost per year, according to the World Shipping Council's report (which received its data voluntarily from its members) on average about 350 containers are lost each year and when including catastrophic events about 675 containers. At least 350 containers containing what? What products that we use do not contain plastic? Are the black bits and pieces of plastic I find on our beaches part of Playstations, TVs, and DVRs? What is still waiting to be released from container imprisonment on the bottom of the ocean?

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