Removing Plastics From The Pacific Garbage Patch

Everybody throws away trash with little or no thought about where it’s going. What you might not know is that a lot of trash goes into our ocean. You may think it is not a big deal and that it’s just a little bit of trash in a really big ocean, but it’s not just a little bit of trash. In fact, it’s a whole lot. There is a place between California and Hawaii called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, but is better known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This area is the largest landfill in the world and is completely in the ocean. What are the effects of the landfill on the environment and how can it be prevented and rehabilitated to its original state?

Most of the garbage, in the Pacific Garbage Patch, are different types of plastic. Unfortunately, unlike other materials, plastics take years to break down. Instead of biodegrading like organic materials, the plastics go through a process of photodegradation, which breaks the plastic into molecular size pieces. The sea life, unable to see the miniscule plastics, swallow them up. It has been shown that towards the top of the pyramid, humans are also consuming the plastics that the animals had once eaten.

The garbage in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t only harmful to the aquatic animals that live inside it, but to the surrounding marine life as well. Several birds who depend upon fishing as their source of food are in just as much danger as the fish who live in the water. As Katherine Cooney, from the New York Times, states, “An Environmental Protection Agency study showed that the chicks that died of those causes had twice as much plastic in their stomachs. Bottle caps, combs, golf tees, toothbrushes and even toy soldiers were found inside the birds.” Cooney is trying to show that the death of these innocent birds is undeniably due to the plastic found in their bodies. An approximated 200,000 of the 500,000 chicks born there each year died from dehydration and starvation (Cooney).

Society has become better acquainted with the dangers associated with pollution during recent years and people have started to adopt environmental attitudes as a result of learning more concerning the harm their actions can provoke to the natural world. The Pacific Trash Vortex is an area in the Pacific Ocean that contains a series of pollutants with most of it consisting of plastic. The area is twice the size of Texas and is killing millions of birds, animal, and fish as they are unable to distinguish between foods they can eat and things that are likely to cause their death.

In the documentary “Inside the Garbage of the World”, the main social problem being explained is that there has been a great influx of plastic and other type of garbage in oceans and their beaches. This buildup of pollution has largely affected the wildlife population ranging from animals on the beaches to the creatures of the ocean. In oceans, what is called ‘garbage patches’, a large buildup of garbage that flow to one area in the oceans, are being created. Approximately 50 percent of all plastic sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor but about 2 times that much is actually already on the ocean floor. In fact, according to the documentary, there is a garbage patch that is to the left of California that is the size of half of the United States. Each year, about 4.7 million tons of plastic goes in the ocean a year and it is estimated that by 2050, there will be another 33 billion tons of plastic added to the present amount. Eighty percent of the current pollution comes from the land. According to marine researchers, twice as much plastic debris is one the ocean floor than it was 10 years ago. In the futures, plastic will break down into smaller pieces of plastic, creating a bigger problem from the habitat. This plastic pollution is one of the leading cause for beach and ocean inhabiting creatures be extinct because animals are mistaking these plastic pieces for food. When scientist began to dissect beach animals such as birds, they discovered that at least fifteen pounds of

This article introduces what a gyre is and states how plastic ends up in the ocean. It mentions how although plastic doesn't begin as toxic it becomes poisonous overtime due to pollutants in the water collecting on the debris. Karpus states how the plastic consumed by marine life can cause them to die of starvation and cause plastic accumulation in the food chain. Karpus talks about how the main issue is plastic's resistance to being degradable. Lastly, the article provides ways to be an activist such as living a plastic free lifestyle and fighting the government's and company’s plastic policies.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the effect of the human population’s waste. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of trash floating in the ocean where there is a high density of garbage because of the Pacific Gyre. “Though their name suggests rafts of bobbing refuse, the patches are instead areas with high concentrations of trash — mostly wee bits of plastic particles that have degraded from larger pieces of litter such as water bottles. The bits amass within ocean vortices, driven by wind and ocean currents.”( Mole) The types of waste found in the garbage patch are micro plastics and macro plastics. Macro plastics can range from

This area is extremely polluted with plastics, metals, fishing nets, and all sorts of debris from beaches or from boats. Moreover, 90% of the trash is plastic and the debris occurs because of the ocean currents, currents push from the shores of California westwards, and from above the Australian and Asian coast pushing eastwards, forming in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Together these currents create a polluted area that appears to be a gigantic garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. People can drive by and visit with boats to see the extreme amount of garbage is out in the open waters. Scientists are not very sure how deep the garbage patch is (Huang 2017,10).

In the world today, not a single of us can truly say that we don’t at lest come in contact with plastic. They are everywhere, in our cars, carpets, food, and virtually every other product we consume; it has becomes a globalization needs that we can’t run away from. As according to the National oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) state the approximately 1.4 billion pounds of trash enters the ocean per year. Most of it get washed up on the beaches by waves and tides, some of it sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor, some got eaten up by marine animals mistaking it for food. Ultimately plastic pollution is a man made catastrophe, as soon as it enter the Oceans it is causing harm to the ecosystems and environment, as wells as affecting

The Truth about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an article that has written by Trayn Laubenstein. This article explained about North Pacific Ocean which is an island of floating plastic with a size same as Texas. In 1997, Capitan Moore observed the tons of Garbage Patch when he was sailing from Hawaii to Southern California. According to Moore, Garbage Patch created by a system of rotating ocean currents which consist of many plastics trash. These plastics have many negative effects on marines life and their ecosystems. Many marines animals in Pacific Ocean use these trash as a food, and they are not able to digest it and they can die. Garbage patch also has bad effects on human life. Many people eat fish that live in polluted waters. Many

Not only is there the Great Pacific Garbage Patch but there are also ocean gyres. Ocean gyres are some of the places with the largest amount of plastic located in the ocean around the world. In these gigantic gyres the water circulates like a vortex, all the trash floats to the middle and stays there. According to the excerpt Facts “The 5 major ocean gyres in the world are the Indian Ocean Gyre which contains the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch, North Atlantic Gyre, which contains the North Atlantic Garbage Patch, equal to the North Pacific Garbage Patch, North Pacific Gyre, South Atlantic Gyre, along with the South Pacific Gyre.” This proves that we have a great quantity of gyres as well as garbage patches. This debris has nowhere to go so they

Marine waste has been a problem for some time now. However, it has recently become an issue that is in need of attention. As stated in the article Plastic Island, Midway Atoll is covered in many corpses of dead birds. When researchers examined the carcases, they found that the cause of death was the fact that the birds consumed pieces of plastic, causing malnutrition. 64% of waste in the ocean is created from shoreline and recreational activities (Marine Debris is Everyone’s Problem). Thousands of organisms are dying purely because of ignorant people who are too lazy to throw away their trash. The Ocean Conservancy spokesman, Tom McCann, said that the issue of marine waste is "entirely preventable” (Ciampaglia 14). But how exactly can we prevent

Firstly, we have to estimate the total amount of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Also, we have to locate exactly where is it. We can start cleaning up the garbage patch by:

of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the exact size remains unknown. In addition, Doucette warns us that this patch contains more than ten million tons of waste. She describes the area to be a “fetid swamp of debris where tiny bits of decaying plastic outweigh zooplankton- one of the most prolific and abundant organisms on the planet- by a ration of six-to-one”(Doucette). It is now apparent that the amount of plastic particles residing in our oceans is damaging the natural habit and this trash is not going anywhere. Due to the currents in the ocean, plastic particles are

My research project question was inspired by my interest and involvement in the environment. This interest in the environment got me thinking about the aspects of environmental issues that I didn’t know much about, including the rubbish problem in the North Pacific Ocean and the world’s habit of ignoring problems which aren’t dire at the present time. As I researched this topic, I discovered that this issue of ignorance is not localised to countries such as Australia, America, Britain and China, that it is rather a huge, global issue which, for some reason, the world needs hard evidence to acknowledge its existence. My outcome takes form in an essay, reporting and explaining my research and evidence. The key finding of my research is that the Garbage Patches do in fact exist despite popular opinion, the evidence collated supports this conclusion.