The World’s Largest Garbage Dump
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
If I told you the world’s largest garbage dump was almost twice the size of continental United States would you believe me?
Well, that’s how big the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the collective name for two gigantic masses of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean. The two masses are known as the Western Pacific Garbage Patch and the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been described as a “plastic soup”. It consists of about 100 million tons of garbage, extending up to 100 feet below the surface, all being held together by the swirling currents of the ocean. The mammoth garbage patch is a result of general litter from both sea vessels and land. Here’s an animation showing the movement of the currents surrounding the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, has compared it to a living entity, “moving around like a big animal without a leash”. Ebbesmeyer, who has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years, says that when the animal comes close to land “…the garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic”. Some beaches in Hawaii have been known to be buried in 10 feet of plastic garbage!
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, an American oceanographer. He came across it by chance while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. After steering into the North Pacific gyre, he found himself surrounded by garbage. Not just a little bit of garbage, but a virtual continent of garbage. All day, every day, for about a week, his vessel sailed through a sea of garbage. Moore said “Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by”.
Following this alarming discovery, Moore sold his oil business and became an environmental activist.
What’s being done about it?
Unfortunately, many scientists believe that it’s pretty much impossible to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They have also said that attempts to do so could actually do more harm to plankton and other marine life. In any case, the US government recently passed legislation to increase funding so that more clean up work can be done.
Image courtesy of Greenpeace
