It floats. It’s twice the size of Texas. And it contains some 3.5 million tonnes of plastic.
Welcome to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Floating somewhere between San Franciso and Hawaii, the Garbage Patch is fed by everyday plastic refuse, wind, and ocean currents that trap the debris. It has been growing tenfold every decade since the 1950s.
Said Oceanographer Marcus Eriksen:
“With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it’s the perfect environment for trapping. There’s nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm.”
And by ‘no more harm’ he means ’stop throwing out so much plastic, stupid’. Scientists estimate that the garbage patch will cost billions to clean up.
Here’s a thought: why clean it up at all? Let’s colonize the sucker. All I need is two ships, 150 stout colonists of virtue true, and some sundry tools and livestock. We will make Garbage Island our home. True, it is a hard (in both a tactile and experiential sense) land. A cruel land. But, by jove, it will be our land.
And fear not, reallanders. Continue to throw away your plastic bags and water bottles. We of Garbage Island will happily accept your trash. Every little piece of plastic means another chunk of farmland, another piece of our floating, garbagey empire.
Photo: The colonisation of Garbage Island. It will be like this, but with, you know, more garbage.
That is disconcerting to say the least… but reading the article, one thing struck me: a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.
Wouldn’t that be visible from space? Why wouldn’t we have heard about this sooner..??
Strange we wouldn’t have heard of this before, but it’s in Wikipedia
Have you ever heard of the great Nike spill? A container of running shoes went overboard. And a container spilled a load of plastic bags into the ocean, just to name a couple things.
Don’t get me started on the nurdles.
Whomever owns the Corporate media really doesn’t want us to know about this stuff, so, it pops once in a while, and then quietly disappears. LOOK! Britney shaved her head That kinda thing.
Greenpeace has been working at getting this out there. Alternet has articles often.
I wrote about it last May on Kos….Not too many people there seemed aware of it even.
Freaky stuff.
To think…trillions upon trillions of plastic bottles, shoes, cups, bags, balloons, general trash…and no one is doing anything?! sure it’ll cost billions, but I think if EVERYONE chipped in, it’d be cleaned up in no time. Damn litterers…