Summary Of The Truth About The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Every day, many people around the world dump trash into rivers or off of boats. To them it’s “out of sight, out of mind”, but it’s not that easy for inhabitants of the ocean. As the garbage flows from rivers into the oceans, it eventually combines with the garbage already floating in the ocean and results in garbage patches, which all

This is a combination of currents and wind that perform a circular vortex motion that collects trash. The vortex motion pulls trash in, while the middle is very calm, so it stays in one place. Most people think of an island filled with trash when they hear the words Garbage Patch. But in reality, these patches are made of small pieces of plastic, called micro plastics that cannot always be seen by the naked eye. The satellite images do not show what we think would be a giant patch of garbage. (National Geographic) “The patch is not an island like most people envision, you can’t walk on it but is more of a plastic soup.” (Moore). According to the website, “¬How Stuff Works”, 90% of this debris is plastic. That is over 3.5 million pounds of plastic. The patch is a gathering place for all the junk dumped in our oceans. Some of the most harmful items, such as expanded Styrofoam, polypropylene, and P.E.T. (polyethylene terephthalate), found in plant fertilizer, has been located in this patch. The plastic is not biodegradable but is photodegradable. In other words, the larger pieces break down into smaller pieces, so the patch just gets bigger every day. Approximately 80 percent of the trash is from the people here on land and the other 20 percent is dumped from ships, fisherman, oil rigs and spilled containers (How stuff works).

Today, scientists believe the world's largest garbage dump isn't on land but it is in the

Ocean currents corral trillions of decomposing plastic items and other trash into gigantic, swirling garbage patches (Pacific Trash Vortex)

More than six million tons of garbage finds it’s way into the oceans. Due to the currents, the garbage ends up in two different locations. Several hundred miles off the coast of Japan lies the Western Garbage Patch, and close to California lies the second patch, known as the Eastern Garbage Patch. Together these two patches of garbage mix to form the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

More than 750,000 pieces of microplastic can be found in just one square kilometer of it. Approximately 80 percent of its debris comes from land, 10 percent is made up of over 700,000 tons of commercial fishing nets, and the remaining 10 percent consists miscellaneous objects discarded by recreational and commercial ships. What is it? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The garbage patch lies in the Pacific Ocean between the west coasts of America and the East coasts of Asia. Because the effects on marine life caused by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are detrimental to their habitat, diet, and

In the story, “Our Oceans Are Turning into Plastic… Are We?” by Susan Casey, Captain Charles Moore experiences what can be described as a living nightmare. In the Northern Pacific subtropical gyre, known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, Captain Moore sees the piles and piles of used, bottles, nets, ropes, bath toys, jugs, and traps, all creating a layer of “plastic crap” above the ocean’s surface, staying completely still in a windless current less body of water. The experience of seeing what you care about be completely changed because of pollution or simple human neglect. Personally, I have an instance of this in the first house that I remember living in. What was once a house that had a lot of connections from not only me, but others in the

In the article, "Plastic in Our Oceans", Kimberly Amaral discusses the everyday uses of plastic and how it can be beneficial to humans, but harmful to marine life. As fishermen casually dump waste overboard, animals mistake it for food sources, such as a turtle mistaking a plastic grocery bag for a jellyfish. From the trash brought out to sea, gyres, large circulations of water, carry the garbage through currents, spreading it to all over the ocean, specifically to the central gyre. Amaral notes common ways for marine life to die from plastic, which include entanglement by plastic rings, consumption of plastic bags and pellets which stuff the intestines and lead to health problems, and suffocation. As researchers today work hard to discover

Marine debris is more than ugly, it kills. There are two proposed plans to cleanup the North Pacific Garbage Island. An island that is made of garbage, primarily plastic. It is over 100 kilometers wide. That is an unbelievable amount of trash. That trash island is floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and California. It has been spun together over time by currents, and the atmospheric pressure in the middle of the ocean is stronger than average. The island’s plastic has melted together, creating a bed of plastic for the rest of the trash to lie on. A a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a

The great pacific garbage patch, or garbage island, as many refer to it, is a region made up entirely of waste. It is around 20 million square kilometers (7.7 square miles) in size. This is the result of careless sailors and beachgoers constantly throwing what they do not want to hold on to into the ocean. The litter gets carried through a variety of currents moving in a clockwise direction into the north pacific subtropical gyre. There, it all adds up to form a pile of garbage twice the size of texas.[8]

Plastic comes in innumerable shapes and sizes; it is used for various purposes. We use it to bag our groceries, pay with it, drink from it, occasionally eat off it or unwrap it to get to food, etc. The functionality of plastic is continual and surrounds us, so what is the con of plastic? When plastic cups, bottles, and bags are abandoned in the street, the wind transports and the rain seizes them into storm gutters, tributaries and eventually the ocean. When rubbish and plastic originate from terrestrial territory and enters the sea it is swept away by an eddy vortex called the North Pacific Gyre. Charles Moore discovered the North Pacific Gyre, or also known as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in 1997. This garbage patch stretches hundreds of miles off the shoreline of California and Hawaii. Scientists estimated its size to be twofold the size of Texas or maybe even more substantial. This garbage patch contains some ten million tons of litter. According to Lindsey Blomberg, who wrote the article titled The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, writes, “What is known for certain is that the marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre is 80% plastic and it's mostly coming from land.” (1) Although the trash is in the ocean, it not only affects us but, wildlife on land or in sea too. Furthermost of the waste in the ocean consists of "microplastics" which according to Kitt Doucette, who wrote the article titled An Ocean Of Plastic is, “Larger chunks of waste that have been reduced to tiny

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

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

The presence of plastic debris will not only effect oceanic habitat and ecosystems but have an economic effect on anthropogenic activities such as tourism on beaches and fishing industry. Although many countries are eager to prevent and manage waste surrounding their coastal waters; none are willing to take responsibility over the large accumulation of waste in ocean gyres, known as garbage patches, and for good reason. These garbage patches are located in

"The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is TWICE the size of continental U.S. and is believed to hold almost 100 million tons of garbage"