Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It is a humongous, Texas sized section of the Pacific ocean where garbage that finds itself in the Pacific ocean collects. It collects there because currents in the ocean form a whirling vortex, known officially as North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and that’s where the garbage eventually ends up.
I’m reading a book called, “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman, which answers the question of what would happen to the planet if one day humans were to mysteriously disappear. It turns out that reading the book, which uses that interesting question to illustrate all the great and small ways we affect the planet, also makes you want us to disappear, because we cause so many problems which would miraculously go away if we went away.
Take the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It turns out that every time it rains or the wind blows, our plastic bottles and bags and other garbage are swept into the ocean. Because plastic basically lasts for thousands of years before degrading, we’ve been creating ever larger and more pernicious swirl of plastic garbage in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, as well as the 5 other ones on the planet. How much plastic? How about 18 million tons?The book tells the story of Charles Moore, an amateur sailor who steered his catamaran into the patch:
For a week, Moore and his crew found themselves crossing a sea the size of a small continent, covered with floating refuse. It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting.
If you’re wondering why that’s bad, consider the effect on animals. Greenpeace estimates that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement. Like this one here, whose stomach is full of plastic it mistakenly ate.
And those plastics also act as sponges for other chemicals, such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or “gender benders’ and resilient poisons like DDT and PCBs. Animals and fish eat those - any chance they don’t end up in our food?Anyway, this is one significant way that plastic is evil. Stay tuned for more, but I’m definitely going to get serious about takeout containers, plastic bags, and other plastics.
- Charles Moore’s account of his journey through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
- Exerpt of “The World Without Us” - the depressing plastic chapter
Great post! We just flew over that heap on our way to China. The patch kinda stinks when hovering just above sea level- not to mention the taste of salty sea-trash.
Take a peak at us when you get a chance!
Cheers!
EFR
Such a eye opener to see a bird full of plastic - I always bring my own bag and try to dispose of any plastic i do end up with very carefully… but really we need to find an alternative QUICK to this problem. Plastic is on everything, around most food too. We should have all the people with the highest IQ’s be brought somewhere together for one month where they do nothing but brainstorm together on environmental solutions.
There are many things that we can do to deal with the problem of plastic. Even CHINA has outlawed the lightweight plastic bags - but in our country, the corporations rule. First of all, don’t take plastic bags from ANY store you go to. I sell organic fairtrade and made in the US reusable shopping tote bags on my website: SustainableBags.Net. (We also have bioplastic - made from corn trash & dog poop bags). But if you forget your bag, just reload up the cart, and empty your groceries into a cardboard box that you keep in your car (if you’re riding in your car), or a box on your bike carrier!
Don’t forget that the water bottles you’re buying are made of plastic: and many of them have phthalates in them - VERY DANGEROUS STUFF - outlawed in Europe for at least 8 years - again, not in the U.S.
Get in touch with your elected officials and tell them that we need to outlaw the “t” shirt bags - and start using bioplastics. Also, write to companies that package food in plastic and tell them you want less packaging. I’m trying to get laws changed so that we can either bring back our plastic prescription bottles, or get it in cellulose envelopes.
BTW, the Pacific Gyre is only 1 of 6 gyres of plastic floating around in the ocean. It’s heartbreaking….