TheSoko.com - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Is there really a Texas-sized patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean? Dave Gabriele takes a look at the problem with plastics.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, sometimes called The Eastern Garbage Patch or the Trash Vortex, is basically a big collection of floating garbage (mostly plastics) in the Pacific Ocean. It’s unbelievably immense size is quoted by various sources as being anywhere from half the size to twice the size of Texas. I know what you’re thinking (I thought the exact same thing), but unfortunately, it is true. Although I’ve heard of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the past, I never fully believed it until I had assurances from the CBC, BBC, Discover Magazine and Greenpeace. I still find it hard to believe it’s there.

What Is It?

The currents of the Pacific Ocean slowly circle around one area in the ocean called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. It is this area in which most floating garbage from the Pacific Rim ends up. Everything that is washed away in the gutters or pushed out by rivers and streams from North America and Asia eventually makes its way to the centre of the gyre. Garbage from oil platforms and ships also contribute a great deal to the problem.

The currents slowly bring all the floating garbage to the same location, a giant island of trash up to 30 metres deep. The size of this floating mass is hard to calculate because of its enormous size and its ever-shifting shape; however, educated estimates put it at roughly the size of Texas.

How Is This Possible?

According to The United Nations Environment Program, every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. Greenpeace reports that every year, around 100 million tonnes of plastic is produced globally and about 10 per cent eventually ends up in the ocean. A major problem is that plastic is often mistaken for food and has been found inside marine life of all sizes, from whales to zooplankton.

American oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and marine scientist Charles Moore published research in 1999 concerning the Garbage Patch. They found that the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (the centre of the Pacific’s circular currents) had a plastic to plankton ratio of 6 to 1.

Problems of Plastic

I’m sure everyone is aware of the troubles with plastic — the main one being that it does not readily decompose like natural products do. For example, a plastic water bottle is said to take somewhere between 50 and 250 years to breakdown. Unfortunately, plastic does not really biodegrade in the way a piece of wood or a vegetable does. “It doesn't biodegrade, it photodegrades, which means it just breaks into smaller pieces, not into components,” says Heather Mallick of the CBC.

It’s not hard to see how this puts us and ocean life in danger. If a plankton ingests a piece of plastic (and manages to survive) and then is eaten by a fish, which is then caught and served for your dinner, then you are the one eating the plastic.

Why Is This Possible?

Sixty years of producing plastics have given birth to new industries and greatly increased the convenience of everyday life. Many of the products we use on a daily basis would be difficult and perhaps too expensive to make from an alternative material. Water bottles made of glass would be more costly, as would a Discman made of steel.

Plastics is a major industry in Canada. The Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA), which undertakes regular market assessments of the plastics industry across Canada, reported that the total value of the Canadian plastics industry in 2005 was approximately $51.5 billion and employed over 118,000 people.

According to the Society of the Plastics Industry in the United States, plastics is America’s third largest manufacturing industry. The U.S. plastics industry employs more than 1.1 million workers and produces $379 billion in annual shipments. There are over 18,500 plastics facilities in every state and industry shipments have grown 3.4 per cent per year.

_________________________________________
severe future consequences

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, not only a testament to the philosophy of “out of sight, out of mind,” is one of the greatest examples of the world’s abandonment of the natural world. Since the era of the Industrial Revolution, we have learned to tame and exploit nature for the benefit of civilization, but one lesson that we are slowly learning is that we cannot fully desert nature without severe future consequences.

Sources:
CBC
BBC
Discover
The Globe and Mail
Greenpeace
LA Times
Seattle Times
CPSC
Plasticsindustry.org
Marine Litter
Greenpeace
Greenpeace