Bubble wrap, kitchen cling wrap, and plastic polybags pollute our oceans more than we realize

Think of ocean pollution, and an image of water bottles strewn across beaches or huge numbers of plastic containers bobbing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may come to mind. In many ways, plastic bottles have become the de facto symbol of the waste that clogs up waterways and harms marine life.

But a new initiative led by fashion designer Tom Ford and the non-profit Lonely Whale Foundation points to an oft-overlooked and more insidious threat: thin film plastic.