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The Biggest Dump in the World
As large as the USA, the Great Pacific Waste Patch is the biggest dump in the world. Ed Cumming discovers that it keeps getting bigger, and could be poisoning us all
Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”
A shark carcass on Kamilo Beach, Hawaii, where plastic particles outnumber sand grains until you dig down about a foot (Photo: ALGALITA MARINE RESEARCH FOUNDATION)
This global problem is the motive behind the Plastiki, a 60ft, 12-ton
catamaran built from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, which embarks on its
maiden voyage from San Francisco this week. The brainchild of David de
Rothschild, the flamboyant British banking heir and environmentalist, the
Plastiki will sail right through the middle of the Garbage Patch as part of
a campaign to help make more people aware of the Pacific’s threatened
communities and of the damage our waste is doing to our oceans.
Plastic is the main issue. Fifty years ago, most flotsam was biodegradable. Now it is 90 per cent plastic. In 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that there were 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in every square mile of ocean. With its stubborn refusal to biodegrade, all plastic not buried in landfills – roughly half of it – sweeps into streams and sewers and then out into rivers and, finally, the ocean. Some of it – some say as much as 70 per cent – sinks to the ocean floor. The remainder floats, usually within 20 metres of the surface, and is carried into stable circular currents, or gyres “like ocean ring-roads”, says Dr Boxall. Once inside these gyres, the plastic is drawn by wind and surface currents towards the centre, where it steadily accumulates. The world’s major oceans all have these gyres, and all are gathering rubbish. Although the North Pacific – bordering California, Japan and China – is the biggest, there are also increasingly prominent gyres in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. Our problems with plastics are only just beginning.
The Pacific Garbage Patch had been predicted as early as the late Eighties but it was only formally discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, an American yacht-racing captain sailing home across the North Pacific from a competition in Hawaii. He noticed a large amount of debris in the centre of the gyre, and together with the oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, formulated the idea of the Eastern Garbage Patch. Other research revealed a secondary patch to the West, and these two together constitute the Great Pacific Patch, located roughly between 135-155°W and 35-45°N. In 1999, Moore followed up his initial findings with a report showing that there was eight times as much plastic as plankton in the North Pacific. And there is a lot of plankton.
The image of a great floating mound of trash, though evocative, can be misleading. Dr Boxall says: “People imagine it as a kind of football pitch of rubbish you can go and walk on – it’s not like that.” As most of the plastic has been broken down into tiny particles, floating beneath the surface, it is impossible to photograph from aircraft or satellites, or even really to see until you are right in its centre. As a result, it is difficult to convey the grave danger this 100 million tons or so of rubbish – and counting – presents. This is where the Plastiki – named after Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki project in 1947 – comes in. Its crew of six is being skippered by the rising star of British ocean sailing, Jo Royle, 29. Ms Royle is everything you could want at the figurehead of your mission: blonde, vivacious and – behind a Lancastrian burr that survived her upbringing in Devon – a passionate environmentalist. She seems unfazed about sailing slap bang into the middle of the watery skip of the world.
“I can’t wait to get there,” she says. “Being in the middle of the ocean puts you back in your place – if you’re not responsive, you don’t survive. It makes you think hard about how you consume.”
However, she readily concedes that it is easy for the layman to ask: “So what?” Some might be tempted to argue that the rubbish has to end up somewhere, and that the ocean is no worse than landfill. Herein lies the main danger: plastic does not biodegrade, but when exposed to sunlight it photo-degrades, breaking down into smaller and smaller particles, and finally to “nurdles”, the industry name for the tiny grains that are the building blocks of most modern plastics. These tiny particles are not harmful on their own, but they are very absorbent, and soak up waterborne toxins, such as pesticides and cooling agents. These nurdles, now saturated in poisons, are eaten by filter-feeders at the very bottom of the food chain, and then make their way up it.
The scale of the toxin problem is unknown. Although plastics have now been around for a century, their use has only been really widespread for 50 years. Also, the threat is not only from food – marine extracts are used in countless other products too: particularly cosmetics. Since there are so many possible routes for toxins from these plastics to enter our food chain, there has yet to be an in-depth scientific study of their possible effect on humans. But these particles are certainly killing marine life: the UN estimates that more than one million birds and 100,000 mammals die every year from plastics – by poisoning, entanglement and choking. There are also studies under way investigating the possible connection between a rise in fertility problems and cancers, and the proliferation of plastic in the ocean.
The solution is equally confounding – there is just so much junk. Most experts agree that the real change needs to come above ground, from people taking more responsibility for their dumping.
As Ms Royle says: “The four worst-offending plastics – carrier bags, bottle-tops, bottles and styrofoam – are some we could easily do without, with a bit more thought. It’s just about making the effort to change our habits: not getting chips in a styrofoam container, reusing carrier bags – small things.”
There are some – led by the renowned American environmentalist and National Geographic Explorer-at-large Sylvia Earle– who think that we should simply try not to use plastics at all. Ms Royle dismisses this approach: “Plastic is a part of our world, and it’s hugely important.”
Others would like the US government to embark on an operation to clean the ocean manually, using tankers to retrieve the plastic, which could then be used as fuel.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” says Ms Royle. “It would take a tremendous amount of resources to sweep the ocean. If you then burn the plastic, you create a lot of black carbon dioxide, which pollutes the atmosphere. I think the solution has to come from the shore.” She points out that San Francisco, the city closest to the Great Pacific Patch, has successfully implemented policies to stop people using wasteful plastics. “If they can do it, so can we. We just need to stop all this dumb usage.”
Dr Boxall is decidedly less optimistic: “There is nothing we can do,” he says. “It’s too big. It’s here to stay. It’s like nuclear waste. Even an oil spillage, disastrous as it is, eventually breaks down. Plastic doesn’t. We’ve simply got to become better about how we dispose of waste.”
The Plastiki team hopes its voyage can make a difference, however small. But until something drastically changes – particularly in developing countries, such as China and Brazil – the ocean will continue to bear the brunt of our wasteful ways with plastic. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and its growing imitators around the world, will continue to sprawl.
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48 Comments so far
Show AllAs an experiment collect each piece of plastic from your home waste stream and you will be amazed at how pervasive plastic is in our food products packaging and everything else we buy.
This would be a good school project in ecology. And math. You could measure the weight or volume of your collection. You could multiply your weekly household plastic use by all of the families in your town, state or country. And then by 52 for a year.
Joe
I actually did that once some years ago. I bought something and I can not rememebr quite what it was, by memory a can opener.
It was wrapped in one of those plastic packages you need tin shears to open. Once I extracted the can opener I recognized the plastic case which no longer was of any use, was larger then the opener both by volume and by weight. The only "use" for this thing is as waste.
I try and avoid buying anything in such packages. Time was you when you bought such untensils they wer ein a bin and you picked one out from the pile. I guess they need to isolate them from one another so they do not catch the dreaded "can opener Flu"
This plastiki stuff is total BS. Poor little rich kid trying to feel better about the fact that his money came from the rape of the planet.
He could have used the status, money and energy to develop a solution like buying one of these 100+ foot ex-around the world racing catamarans sitting around doing nothing and rig it to mow back and forth across the area skimming and filtering out the trash and refining it.
Or how about starting a campaign that educates the public that recycling is a scam to help us feel better about buying tons of crap and tossing it at a ridiculous rate.
PEOPLE PEOPLE it is time to stop talking and get down to work.
>>>souperman2 wrote: Or how about starting a campaign that educates the public that recycling is a scam to help us feel better about buying tons of crap and tossing it at a ridiculous rate.
souperman2, that was the first time I've seen anyone saying "recycling is a scam", and I think you're *not* far off the mark at all. I think an entire generation has grown up without the slightest notion of what it means to reuse things. Eating in restaurants where the plates, bowls, cups and the cutlery are collected, washed and reused seems to be only for the pricier ones, and *all* fast food is now served or sold on disposable containers. Fountain pens and ink pots, glass milk bottles, etc., are all long gone. And I don't believe for a minute that these things happened "naturally" by way of "progress". It's the relentless spread of capitalist control, where "labor" is seen as nothing more than an expense item. Where I will blame the "regular folks" is in the mindless manner in which they've bought into whatever the "system" is selling them. Not many even think for a minute where all the styrofoam cups and plates end up after a picnic.
"Eating in restaurants where the plates, bowls, cups and the cutlery are collected, washed and reused seems to be only for the pricier ones..."
Where do you eat?
But I agree, recycling is largely a feel-good acam. Little of what one puts in your blue bin gets recycled in a meaningful way - most aluminum cans ultimately get remade into cans, but it is an incredibly energy-inefficient process compared to the refillable deposit bottles still used in the rest of the civilized world. Throw-away glass bottles don't get turned inot new bottles at all - at best, they get crushed up into sand and used in asphalt road mixes. Almost no plastic containers get re-used into new plastic containers, apparently, even when a plastic has the same code, it often isn't compatable with other plastic resins, so it simply gets tossed in the trash by the sorter.
Then, there are those super-tough labels on many glass jars that are probably incompatable with recycling the jar - and also make the user less interested in saving the jar for re-use in the kitchen.. I even see those on so-called "green" products.
Having written the above, I still fine it incomprehensible how so much plastic is finding itself in the sea. All the unrecycled plastic trash in my area goes to a landfill. The Kentucky River, which drains eastern Kentucky where people dump their trash down the hillside inot the nearest hollow, is famous for the floating plastic trash that it disgorges into the Ohio, and ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico, but that is still a small amount of trash.
If Iv'e said it a million times, I'll say it again.
Biodegradable plastic can be made from Hemp.... and paper and all kinds of building material and cloth.
What are we waiting for... California?
When I contacted my Senator (Chuckles Grassley, R(epublitard)-IA) about removing federal obstacles to the cultivation of hemp in the US, he responded with some hysterical nonsense about keeping kids off drugs, displaying either his ignorance or his obeisance to special interests (or both!).
With this kind of thinking, I guess we deserve to die/drown in our own sh!t.
Yep, Ignorance is no excuse for a bad law.
The article mentions that the giant plastic boat is: "The brainchild of David de Rothschild..."
Wasn't the consumer economy sort of a Rothschild brainchild as well?
Why do their children get to damage so many other children?
During the early 60's My family was being watched by counter Intel FBI, CIA and more.
So when my Dad's friend Gus Hall, the CPUSA leader, came over for a visit, I decided to ask him a question that was at the heart of the Red Scare at the time.
I asked "Is it true that Russia funds the Communist Party?" He laughed and said "No, we are funded by the Rothschild Bank."
Gus was Jewish too and then gave me a history lesson on how many Jews became the big Bankers of the world.
Now, If Russia had funded the CPUSA, we would all probably have been in Jail because all of the red baiting and FBI records that I saw were based on the lies, rumors and investigations that Russia funded the American Communist Party.
Now the history of the war profiteering Rothschild Bank is well known (Google it) so in my view young David R. has a lot to try and make up for his family tradition.
Look upon it as a form of birth control.
Or as just another form of control.
"They're in charge. They'll know what to do!"
And that's why the earth is doing so well.
Royle, Earle and Boxall should get together and do all three.
The scary part is the toxins making their way into the food chain. The tiny particles, nurdles, may seem insignificant, but through bio-accumulation will threaten every living creature with poison. The biological consequences are enormous, internal organs failing, genes being mutated, digestive and reproduction systems crippled. Oil has to be the greatest curse ever discovered and used by humans.
No, that title is still held by nuclear fission. But it is up there.
The potential is certainly there for a global nuclear disaster, but at this point in time oil has done the most damage.
The Grandstanding Rothschilds, an act of phoney drama instead of ACTUALLY DOING something about the plastic/oil problem they financed to begin with. How much is his showboating episode costing? He could use that money to begin cleaning it up. Go to www.litteraryjournal.com to find out what you can start doing to become aware of the massive trash problem we have everywhere. Please BAG YOUR TRASH and PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF, take a bag with you on your walks to pick up trash, START THERE!
I hate to be negative but even if the vortex were in the Gulf of Mexico, I don't think most Americans would be concerned.
It wouldn't just be IN the Gulf of Mexico, it would essentially BE the Gulf of Mexico* !!
Even southerners might then notice they were fouling their nest !!
*[Six times the size of the UK = 6 * 244,820 sq. km = 1.47 million sq. km., while Gulf of Mexico = 1.6 million sq. km]
(areas of UK and Gulf of Mexico from Wikipedia)
What is 'black carbon dioxide' and why does it pollute the atmosphere? Carbon dioxide is a gas, and not black. Although there are concerns for it as a greenhouse gas, it cannot be said to pollute the atmosphere. I would certainly prefer this plastic converted to carbon dioxide than to have it drifting around in the ocean and entering into the food chain.
Apropos to this article, here is some depressing photographic work on the subject:
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
interesting that, from the perspective of the plastic, the trip through the bird, even during decomposure, is utterly external...
the plastic goes on, unaltered...ready to be swallowed again...even used again, if a matching container were found...
like the little neutrino in the Klaatu song...on and on and on...forever...
All plastic can be disolved by a solvent at the right temperature and pressure. there is technical no reason why plastic cannot be collected, pulverized, dissolved and run right back through the refinery and turned in to whatever you want. I mean if they can dig up the tar sands and get crude out of that stuff, plastic should be easy.
I remember back in the '80s and 90's how the newsprint industry fought against recycling paper. its the same thing.
Solvents are carcinogenic and often interfere with hormones. The key is to use less plastic.
Joe
Yes, reducing consumption is the first step everyone can take. There are new organic plastic-like materials being developed that biodegrade.
OK this does it. For a long time I have put off writing Costco and other companies about the overuse of plastic packaging. Does each piece of fruit have to come in a plastic armor so hard that it takes a blowtorch to open it up? Does a tiny 3 oz. jar of face makeup have to come mounted on a foot square melange of cardboard, plastic and metal ties? Taking it further, I think there should be tanks of detergents or other non-food liquids, for example, in stores. You could bring in your old package and refill it.
We should rebel and consider excess packaging, especially plastic packaging, a real negative when making choices of what to buy. It should be a deal-breaker. We should also take a minute to let companies know that is what we are doing. Making a responsible choice and speaking up are good for mental health.
Joe
You write, "Taking it further, I think there should be tanks of detergents or other non-food liquids, for example, in stores. You could bring in your old package and refill it."
This is the case in many natural food stores and co-ops. I have been buying soaps of all kinds and shampoo in containers I have reused 50 times or more. My co-op doesnt even offer plastic carrier bags and one can reuse plastic produce bags at least 3 or four times.
You write, "We should rebel and consider excess packaging, especially plastic packaging, a real negative when making choices of what to buy. It should be a deal-breaker."
I agree. I try to never buy products with excess packaging, especially plastic. One of the worst is those huge plastic tubs of lettuce or spring mix.
Great. Can you tell me where exactly so I have a real life example to show the store managers? They need to be convinced that it is do-able. Thanks.
Joe
Plastic Pollution Coalition:
http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org
actually, thanks for that link. Good site with useful, sensible tips and information. (except for that color on the home page :)
Once again the industrial sector has us by the balls because just who will be able to stop these poisoners of the planet from making plastics?
And on the other hand, why isn't someone out there 'mining' this incredibly huge source of plastic which surely has a lot that are recyclables?
This story explains that the plastic "is carried into stable circular currents, or gyres."
Perhaps that's what Lewis Carroll meant by the first stanza of his "Jabberwocky" poem:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky
-TIA
"Gyre" simply means "to rotate" or "a thing having the property of rotation" you know, like "gyroscope" or "gyraton".
There are biodegradeable packaging substitutes for plastic, and I agree that Costco is a MAJOR OFFENDER and should be dressed down, along with Wal-Wart. Cities can be made to ban bags - it is possible to carry a small bag with you to carry your groceries. I've been lazy about it some, but I could prob force myself to do it all the time. The problem comes from clowns who think they are above change and 'lefty enviro communism', a problem in the US as much as anywhere. Finally, plastic bag and bottle makers should be taxed into the stratosphere - we all know that's the only way to change anything. We have to go back to glass for liquids - if it breaks oh well. If its heavy, burn some calories fatty. I guess the fuel involved in transport would go up because of the weight - electric trains, and local production!!! Global corporations need to end TODAY.
Good comments. We at Project Kaisei are working on some ways to clean some of the mess up in the ocean, using passive netting for the small particles that would use low energy and low marine life loss, much like a sea-anchored fenceline. The promising area for remediation is to turn the plastic into fuel, but that does not mean burning it, making black carbon, it means re-liquifying it, and then burning as if a typical engine fuel. There is not a lot of marine life in the gyre in the daytime, so using other fishing techniques with escape mechanisms for any sea life, for the larger pieces of debris, will also be possible. The other platform for change is on land, with prevention, and this issue in the gyre is finally getting some companies and communities to wake up to our issue of waste, and the materials we use in our daily lives that are virtually permanent. This has to change, and this is where the opportunity lies! Those who deny it will miss out, as others move on.
Think about adding a new word to the mantra - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. That new word is REFUSE. And, if you don't refuse, and it is not treated properly (into recycling or other use), then it becomes refuse (trash)...... and that is a problem.
This is the year to make a big impact....
The plastic heap in the middle of the pacific is a monument to consumer culture of wealthy nations that is slowly killing the planet...oh the author forgt to mention the milions of sea birds its choking to death
I, too, would like to know what "black carbon dioxide is". My limited knowledge of chemistry and physics offers no clue. Could someone please enlighten us?
Jim Shea
If viewed in the context of burning plastic, one might think the author was instead referring to soot.
Journalists generally have no training in science, and especially with respect to modern journalists, they also show a complete disregard for researching their topic and critical thinking.
Most modern journalists offer little more than a freshman English major writing their first essay.
Sad Earth!
Tell me again how great industrial civilization is. If it is not abolished, it will destroy life on this planet.
I'm afraid you're right. Except for the Amish and Hutterite communities.
They're just not as smart as us industrially sophisticated types. They don't seem to have figured out how to build a single damned thing that won't just disappear when left to the elements for a while. They've got no high-speed machines or gadgets that go boom. And they may know what a politician and a CEO and a soldier are -- but they don't make any of those things either. That's why most people don't even know they're there.
Against apparent odds, I expect they'll be unaffected by our passing. They'll go on about their peaceful lives as they have for hundreds of years; good stewards, caring for one another and the land.
Because there is a slow but inexorable justice that is beyond the courts of men.
Back in the 1950s you'd see beer cans littering the landscape but but not many beverage bottles because they were "returnable". This meant that you paid a deposit of 2 cents per bottle (12 cents per six-pack). That was about 1/3 of the cost of the actual product. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $1.20 per six pack today. Incentive! Even the cardboard carry cartons were reusable and got recycled by the bottler. Six packs were stored and shipped in wood cases (four to the case)that lasted through many shipping cycles and were biodegradable. Most people returned the bottles for the deposit. But even castaway bottles didn't last long on the landscape because kids routinely scavanged them up for spending money. (However, I sure don't miss the broken glass that was an ever present danger to kids.)
The answer might be as simple as phasing in a pre-paid bounty on otherwise "disposable", litter-prone objects, starting with the most objectionable and working steadily upward to higher rates of recovery. Where a few people now recycle as a matter of conscience, many more will respond to cash - especially if it's their cash, paid up front. As recovery accelerates, habit will become more ingrained and industry will reengineer product design & composition to enhance the recycling operation and reduce costs. Might work.
We've got a choice: we pay now or our kids pay later.
In the end, good housekeeping always pays.
####
Thinking of softdrink, I was walking through a local supermarket when I suddenly realized that the space devoted to softdrinks there is actually larger than the entire grocery stores that dotted Baltimore neighborhoods when I was a kid. And there were NO softdrinks available in ANY public school - you got milk or water from the hall fountain, period. At home, Cokes (and other sweets) were for special occasions only. We were a skinny generation.
"We were a skinny generation."
Not just us kids. If you look at photos of soldiers around the Pacific rim during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, the men are all lean, and the WASPS had curves (though still slim).
Today's military men are polarized into the over-weight and the steroidal. Military women are hardly distinguishable from the men. The reasons? Bad food, bad drugs, bad attitudes.
I understand China has banned plastic bags.
And there are already biodegradable plastics , garbage bags and food containers often made from corn
The Biggest Dump in the World IS the USA!
"USA! USA! WE'RE #1, at #2!"
It's about time the Rotschilds, with their estimated 500 TRILLION is assets (including much of the world's gold reserves) begin to look at and possibly address this problem. Come to think of it, the money spent lobbying against O'Bamacare would have paid for everyone's health care this year as well. World, we need to re-adjust our priorities!!!
There is absolutely no possibility of the Earth, our Earth, to survive for another five hundred years, at the rate man is killing it. With a population of six or so billion people, it is impossible to educate a tiny fraction of the population to what is happening to our Earth and how man is killing it. Even with the education of the few people capable of even slightly understanding the problems of mans destructive power toward the environment,little could be done to reverse the destructive practices perpetrated. In the United States,the vast majority of people shopping everyday would hardly be convinced to not use the plastic bags offered. The richest countries in the world could not possibly afford to clean up the oceans.And what would we do with millions and millions of tons collected?? Bury it?
Along with killing the oceans,many, many other environmental problems exist and cannot, if ever, be solved. These problems hinder greatly,any possible solutions to the oceans recovery........and the beat goes on.