Swirling Mass of Ocean Trash Grows Bigger Than The U.S.
If the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gets any bigger, we may have to colonize it--that is, if it doesn't invade us first. This swirling mass of plastic debris was a Texas-sized vortex when I first wrote about it in November. Now, this mass of roughly 100 million tons of garbage has overtaken an "area that is maybe twice the size" of the continental United States, as one researcher who's studying the vortex told the Independent.
Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a "flotsam" expert, has been trailing the trash vortex for fifteen years and describes it as "a big animal without a leash:"
When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic."
The patch of garbage, which has actually expanded into two connecting areas known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, was first discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who was "taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race."
As Moore navigated through the rarely traveled North Pacific gyre, "a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems," he became perplexed that there, thousands of miles from shore, was an endless stream of debris:
"Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by. How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"
The spectacle both galled and galvanized Moore. Heir to an oil industry fortune, he sold his business interests and became an environmental activist, founding the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
Before the advent of modern plastics, the garbage we dumped in the ocean eventually degraded, but now, "every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," as Tony Andrady, a chemist with the Research Triangle Institute, told the Independent.
The UN Environment Programme estimates that in 2006, every square mile of ocean contained 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. This slowly revolving mass of rubbish kills "more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals," according to the UN Environment Programme.
The plastic poses a health hazard to humans, too, because it acts as a carrier for the chemicals and pesticides that foul the ocean and find their way in to our food chain. Moore warns that this toxic "plastic stew" will double in size over the next decade unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics.
Learn how you can help save the planet from plastic at plasticsareforever.org. 
- Categories: Environment
its bullshit
Would like to share some "basurarte" [garbageart" I created with stuff I pick up on a daily basis at a park near my mother's home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Please let me know where I can mail you the pix.
I have cllected garbage from California to Greece, Corsica to Argentina for the last 40 years. I was a very early member of STOP in Montreal, Canada, and drove my collected tin cans to the Continental Can co. at least once a month.
Now I am trying to create art, as others do, although mine is very simple and easy for anyone to do. Of course, it doesn't get rid of the stuff, but at least it's on the walls, not in a landfill! have no room at my mother's to get very big, so most of what I collect ends up in the trash cans! And from there, who knows...?
I try and will check out your "take action" site.
Thanks.
mg
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If this was the only horrific problem fouling our planet then possibly I could file it, but actually that's not remotely the case. We're melting the poles, car, train, plane and truck driving the air into ruin, even (so I recently heard) killing off the honey bees, for goodness sake! Now please don't cut me off at the knees because of my next comment. Did anyone every hear this? "he will bring to ruin those ruining the earth"... that sounds like a SiFi movie I recently saw, but I actually saw that written in the bible. Now the last time I saw the news the different political parties in the US couldn't stand to be in the room together long enough to figure out who was willing to set next to each other much less open talks with the rest of the world about how to save the planet! So here's my question. Does anybody really think the whole world is going to actually put their differences aside and cure the planet or should I let those watchtower people in my house the next time they call? See, one part of that two part question is Disney fantasy and one part is probably right on the money!
Thanks
Man will not change and actually it's really already too late for us.
This problem will solve itself soon enough once humans destroy enough of the world
we will start to die off and hopefully some creatures will survive and they will carry on.
The earth will be much better off without humanity around.
For decades, environmentalists have warned of a coming climate crisis. Their alarms went unheeded, and a few years ago we reaped an early harvest; a singularly ferocious hurricane season, record snowfall in New England, the worst-ever wildfires in Alaska, arctic glaciers at their lowest ebb in millennia, catastrophic drought in Brazil, devastating floods in India - portents of global warming's destructive potential. the facts are that the people that are wealthy enough to make a dramatic change to this problem will not go back in time to a simpler life "disposable plastics" and electronic equipment made most of them wealthy we need bright minds and new ideas to help save the animals because if they die we die.
I wanna quit my job and help. Skip global warming, pollution like this is just wrong. I'm all about helping animals and this seems like it will affect even human animals. Since they are proving Global Warming wrong lately, the right wingers are going to tap resources and pollute at an all time high now. No reason our footsteps have to be this big that we humans are leaving NO WAY, NO REASON!
You don't need to see it with your own eyes, it's not CO2 its TRASH.
This trash problem can only be solved by big business stopping individual packaging, shipping food back and forth across the world, and using plastic. Remember the old days of the pickle barrel, penny candy they put in a bag? We have to buy local, take a step back in time, to build a better future.
Global warming may- ore may not be caused by humans, garbage undisputable is.
80% of the worlds natural resources are used by 15% of the inhabitants. So who's island is it floating out in the Pacific?
I feel like it could be true, but need to see it to really believe it!
Dr. David Suzuki must hear this!
Thank you!
Lora