The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
As I was driving in, I heard a story on the radio about “The Great Pacific Garbage patch.” I had never heard of such a thing and at first thought it was a joke. To my amazement, when I got to work, I looked up the Great Pacific Garbage patch on Google and found it to be as true as can be.
It seems that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch also known as the Eastern Garbage Patch or Pacific Trash Vortex is island of trash in the central North Pacific Ocean. The estimated size of this pile of trash is that it is twice the size of Texas and contains over 100 million tons in floating garbage and growing.
This “patch” was created by the Pacific currents carrying garbage from North America, Asia, and the islands (the whole Pacific rim), and then concentrating it into a continent swirl of garbage; a vortex. The majority of the source of this trash comes from land – dropped into the streets, into drains, into sewers, and leading out to the ocean. About 80% is from land, and 20% from ships at sea. It takes about 5 years for trash to reach the gyre from the west coast of North America, and less than a year from the coast of Asia.
About 80% of this junk is plastic. Plastic is 100% non- biodegradable. But, in water, and with sunlight beaming down on it, plastic is broken down into bits, and solids become chips and those chips become dust eventually.
Plastic bags shred, and also will eventually become plastic dust. On islands of the Pacific, coming from all over the Pacific rim, plastic, swirl into a vortex that eventually brings them to these shores, creating sand dunes made of plastic. The more the plastic breaks down, the more of a threat it becomes, because it starts to affect even the smallest organisms on a molecular level, thus invading the entire food web in the ocean. There is 6 times as much plastic in the gyre than there is plankton. Plankton is this area’s most abundant food source.
Animals mistake all this waste as food and die from either plastic poisoning or blockage of their digestive system. Sea turtles may think that floating plastic bags are jellyfish, rope may become entangled in the tentacles of jellyfish. Albatross (seagulls) mistake waste for food all the time. Often they are found dead a shore, and their skeletons show nothing but a pile of plastic within. Chicks get fed with waste that the parents fly back to the nest too, killing the chicks as well.
All this plastic absorbs, transports, and releases hydrophobic pollutants (PCB, DDE, DDT). This harms the ocean’s foodchain and can thus affect us as well, causing diesease, infertility, etc.
So how can this problem be fixed? Well it would require more money than any nation is probably willing to spend on the clean-up project. The best thing we, or anybody can do, is the obvious we have been taught for years:
-Reduce your plastic waste
-Recycle
-Do not litter
-Participate in beach clean ups, riverbed/runoff clean ups, drainage clean ups, etc.Generate Free Energy
Make your own Solar Panels!
Eliminate your Power Bill!
Run your car on water!!
Join the Green Eco Club!
October 7, 2009
Tags: Alternative Energy, Energy, environment, go green, Going Green, green, pollutino, pollution, recycle, Recycling, Solar Power Posted in: Going Green, Recycling
3 Responses
This is so bad for the ocean.
I can’t believe people don’t understand.
I agree with you fully. I just hope it is not to late.
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