Mar 09 2009
Garbage Patch Kids
People are losing the battle to clean up the eco-messes they make. As a result, the world’s biggest landfill is in the Pacific Ocean. There is a slow-moving clockwise spiral of currents created by air currents. It’s an oceanic desert, (not a dead zone, like off the coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico and the east coast). It’s filled with tiny phytoplankton but hardly any big fish. Fishermen avoid it. It’s made up of people’s trash. It is the largest landfill in the world, and it is mostly made up of bits of plastic floating in the middle of the ocean. There are actually two large patches of garbage that have sort of drifted apart. The Eastern one estimated as being the size of Texas. (L.A. Times )
The Western garbage patch is floating east of Japan and is approximately the same size. Both patches collect trash from all over the world. The U.N. Environment Program estimates that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter are floating on every square mile of the oceans. About 70% will eventually sink and after it sinks, it continues to kill and disturb life in the depths of the water. This plastic doesn’t just sit on the floor of the ocean and get covered up with sand, it continues to move with the currents.
Obviously, this is horrible, and mainly because it’s such a massive size it would be impossible to clean it all up. Teams of scuba divers go out to areas of the ocean every year to cut nets and try to clean the worst of it up from marine life habitats, but it’s a losing battle, and it’s an expensive job. Worse, the patch is estimated to be growing thousands of square miles every year, and it’s killing so much wildlife. Birds and other animals eat the plastic, thinking it’s food, and die. Watch this sad video about Albatrosses accidentally eating plastic and dying of dehydration and starvation in the Pacific, even though they eat every day. (click on ‘The Plastic Diet’) They mistake the plastic for food and after eating it, it stays in their stomachs until they die, which is often before they reach adulthood.
Albatross are far from the only victims. It’s estimated that about 1 million seabirds choke or get tangled in plastic nets or other debris every year. About 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, other marine mammals and sea turtles suffer the same fate.
Greenpeace estimates that of the over 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year (everything that is made of plastic, not just bottles) about 10 percent ends up in the ocean, and eventually makes its way to this Garbage patch.
“Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [source: Greenpeace ]. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore.”
This is horrifying to me, mostly because it keeps growing, and it’s so deadly to wildlife. If it wasn’t growing, at least there would be some hope of cleaning it up. There is at least one company I have heard about called Eco-mugs that is trying to make money out of this garbage patch, and clean up some of the mess at the same time. Other companies must be trying to do this too.
Greenpeace is studying the problem along with scientists to see what impact this mass of garbage has on ocean life. Apparently, styrofoam ends up in this garbage patch too. So does plastic that doesn’t come from bottles. Anything that can float away will eventually end up in this patch. It’s estimated that some of this garbage has been there for over 60 years.
Sometimes I think humans are determined to kill off all life on earth but themselves — except, we would not survive if all of the rest of the world’s life was dead. Why are we doing this? Please think twice before you use plastic in the future. The average American used 223 pounds of plastic in 2001. The plastics industry expects per-capita usage to increase to 326 pounds by the end of the decade. (LA Times ) Instead of plastic bottled water why not get a water filter for your tap? (I have one, and they work great). At least, make sure you recycle the plastic you use so it doesn’t end up in the ocean!
