The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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

Scientist have now begun research on the mass production of plastic and the accumulation of plastic in our oceans. There are several ways plastic can degrade into micro-plastic. For example photodegradtion and weathering processes can increase the designation of plastic materials causing them to become microscopic. Common locations where scientists are discovering mass quantities of microplastics are in the subtropical gyres, closed bays, gulfs and seas that have coast lines heavily populated by humans. These microplastics can now be chased up into the food web, starting with lower trophic level producers and slowly making their way into the tissues of higher trophic predators.

For thousands, maybe even millions, of years, marine debris has built up on these little islands in the pacific ocean. However one may know it as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. ?The Great Pacific Garbage Patch spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan? (Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Marine Debris is litter that ends up in oceans, and other large bodies of water. This in turn makes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Plastic has become one of the most pervasive materials in the world and is used to baggage about any consumer item. About three hundred million tons of plastic are consumed every single year and only fifteen percent of that amount is recycled (Cronin). Plastic does not biodegrade and can remain intact for up to a thousand years. “In fact, every single piece of plastic that has ever been manufactured is still in existence today” (Cronin). At least two hundred seventy thousand are believed to be floating around on the surface of the oceans alone, while a number of “trash islands” have formed in various areas of the world. The most-well known of these – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch– is already twice as large as the U.S. state of Texas.

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

After careful analysis, it appears that “Can the Pacific Garbage Patch be Cleaned Up?” by Danial Stone as published in Newsweek, is a credible sources. The author, Daniel Stone, has a Masters degree from John Hopkins University in Environmental Science and Policy, and a Batchers degree from the University of California, Davis in Political science. Furthermore, Stone worked for Current Magazine, America’s Most Wanted, and was the Senior Reported for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Currently, Stone in employed as the Short-Form Editor for National Geographic. I have found no way to contact the author. While there is no citations or reference page, the information presented in this source is found in other, credible sources. After briefly

Plastic in the world’s oceans has reached an unfathomable, and frankly disturbing level. It is speculated that there are at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing a combined 268,940 tons currently floating in the world’s oceans (“Plastic Pollution in the World 's Oceans” par. 17). What’s more, of the quarter million tons of plastic in the ocean, anywhere from 7,000 to 35,000 tons is

The second article I used was from greenlivingideas.com. On that site, I learned that the Pacific Ocean has three garbage patches. The Eastern Garbage Patch, The Western Garbage Patch, and the Subtropical Convergence Zone, which is located in the North Pacific. “This is an oceanic mess of an unprecedented degree. Because the billions of pounds of trash are dispersed over so much of the open ocean, it cannot be dragged in, and because it contains so many types of garbage- including microplastics that have broken down because of saltwater and sun exposure, some of it cannot even be gathered. And plastic never fully degrades, it just breaks down into a smaller and smaller pieces.” According to the EPA, every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence. This quote makes me think that trash has a huge impact on animals and the rest of our world. Even the smallest piece of trash can kill or injure animals badly. I sent out a survey, and two of four people said yes, they noticed even the smallest piece of trash or the least amount of trash can kill an animal, and it was human waste. The quote I used was, “No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage

For my service event, I attended a beach cleanup event in Indianola, which is in Kitsap County. When I arrived, I met with twenty other participants and received instructions from a local community member. We were given gloves, large orange plastic bags, smaller plastic bags, and flags. The larger bags were for the garbage we collected, the smaller bags were for recyclable items (such as aluminum cans and glass bottles), and the flags were for needles and similar items that we could not collected safely. We divided into two group and headed in opposite directions up the beach to collect all the debris we could find. Over my stretch of beach, I mostly found Styrofoam and a wide variety of plastics including water bottles, lighters, pens,

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

It was discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore and is getting bigger by the day. In Earth Island Journals website Charles Moore states, “When plastic is so prevalent that it can fill up a creature’s stomach, that turns off the desire to feed, and if an organism doesn’t put on fat stores for reproduction and migration, it’s going to crash in population.” This is not only a problem to us but it is also affecting the oceanic wildlife. According to the Clean Our Oceans Refuge Coalition's website, “12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic are ingested by fish in the North Pacific each year.” The pieces of plastic they consume ends up being transferred in the food chain to bigger fish and then eventually to us. Most of the garbage spills are followed by toxic chemicals which ends up in the food web and then inside our bodies which can be very harmful to us and the

In the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific, there is a steadily growing problem, a problem so big it is larger than Texas. This problem has been named the great Pacific garbage patch and it is only getting bigger as time goes on and more waste finds itself into the ocean. It is estimated that the great Pacific garbage patch holds around 3.5 million tons of garbage, of that 3.5 million tons most of it is composed of plastics (Wilson). All this garbage is kept in a big heap due to swirling ocean currents called gyres (Wilson). This plastic has a huge impact on the environment and the people who turn to the ocean for food and income. Since the discovery of the great Pacific garbage patch plastic has spread beyond the Pacific into other oceans

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

First, I would like to say that much of the information provided by Rogers was surprisingly new to me. I like to think of myself as being pretty knowledgeable about waste/recycling. In the past I have watched documentaries on e-waste and clothing recycling plants overseas. In my high school chemistry class during sophomore year I remember being taught by two of my classmates during their presentation on recycling about the meanings of the numbers printed on plastics and how glass, plastic, and metals were re-purposed into new objects. Before I left home, my mom was super into recycling and made sure my sister and I put what could be recycled into the proper bin and in order to keep the items out the landfills as long as possible. I know and practice the phrase “reduce, reuse, and recycle”. I know that the Great Pacific garbage patch exists. In reading this, I was surprised to find that the history and current state of the garbage industry is so horrifying and entertaining, and also that there was so much information which was new to me. I learned a ton of useful information. I definitely plan to recycle this information and share it others.

Although many recognize that there is a problem with plastic pollution in the ocean many are unaware of how extreme this problem actually is and how quickly it is progressing. Plastic was first introduced in the 1950’s and it only took 10 years for scientists to begin to recognize the presence of plastic in the ocean. In 1972, J.B Colton of the National Marines Fisheries Service in Rhode Island published articles in Science warning that the toxic from plastic in the ocean was at its all-time worse and he predicted that it would not be long until the toxic would affect marine animals (Moore 1). “The increasing production of plastic, combined with present waste-disposal practices, will probably lead to greater concentrations on the sea surface” (Colton 1). Later on that same year the 1972 Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act was approved and passed by the U.S. Congress in order to regulate ocean dumping of waste and provided a research program on ocean dumping. However, this does not solve the problem of the amount of plastic in the ocean. What was not realized at this time was the fact that ocean dumping was not the only