Did you know that the Pacific Ocean has a bit garbage pile in the middle of it??? I had heard about the Pacific Gyre, a circulation pattern in the Pacific in which things tend to accumulate. I had heard that there was garbage that collects there, but I had no idea of the size of it... or the ramifications. Plastic is the primary component... but plastic lasts forever, right? So what harm can it do?? Well... plastic does last forever, but through the process of photo-degradation it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces... and leaches toxins... So big critters (like albatross) eat the big pieces... and little critters (like krill) eat the small pieces... and it gets passed up the food chain... eventually ending up in things that we eat. Most of this garbase (80%) comes from garbage from land, not from passing ships, etc. Every once in a while, this gyre will spew garbage out towards Hawaii... so that whole beaches are covered with garbage, several feet deep. Can we clean this garbage pile up?? Apparently it's not feasible to send ships out to scoop up garbage spread over an area twice the size of Texas and floating to a depth of 100 feet. But what we can do is make sure that we don't send more plastic to compound the problem... So, the next time you see a plastic bottle floating down a creek or river... or see a plastic bag blowing around the streets... why not do our planet a service and clean it up? (See below for some links)
http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom
http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm
http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/plastic_ocean_report.pdf
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