The garbage patch or Pacific Gyre is a spot in the Pacific Ocean, almost directly between Asia and North America where a trash dump has grown to be bigger than Texas. This is not an intentional dump, like a landfill; it has been growing over time because of the way the current moves in a circular pattern in the ocean. All the trash, mostly plastic, is basically trapped in a vortex. Since studies done in the 1990’s the quantity of the plastic has tripled from about 320,000 to 1 million particles per square kilometer.
Imagine being an animal living in or around the water around this area...It would be like living in the city dump buried underneath everybody's trash. Except this isn't just the trash from one city, it is coming from the whole world. The animals in this region are literally eating plastic for meals; it is not just a little bit of plastic that is contaminating their food; it is more like they can find a little bit of food that is contaminating their plastic! These poor animals are dying because they are stuffing themselves full of plastic, leaving no room for food or even water. Scientists Michelle Hester and Hannah Nevins have been doing research on seabirds, and have found such things as fishing line, industrial plastic pellets, and even pacifiers in the stomachs of birds. This doesn’t only affect the birds; the plastic has even been found in phytoplankton and zooplankton. These are the smallest known organisms in the ocean. The bottom of the food chain one might say, meaning that every other animal that preys on the plankton is also eating plastic.
There are so many different aspects of this huge trash pit to think about; how could we, as a society, let our habits become so life threatening? How do we justify this to future generations? Who is to blame, if anyone? How much more of this can the Earth endure? What can we do to help!?
In 1862 Alexander Parkes unveiled the first type of man made plastic at a London exhibition. This was the first time anyone had seen anything of the type, and Parkes claimed that his invention could do anything that rubber could do. Parkes invention spewed a whole line of new inventions that stemmed around plastic. So, plastic was the new thing. And soon enough it became the only thing. Anything you can think of can be packaged in plastic like water, hygiene products and food. Many products are made entirely out of plastic like notebooks, storage items, household appliances, fashion accessories and bags. All of these items have to go somewhere. Plastic is not biodegradable, so where does it go? If plastic is recycled properly, it will be broken down and reused to make other plastics, but if not it ends up in landfills, making them toxic, and now a greater and greater number of them are floating over to the Pacific Gyre.
It may seem like an impossible task to even attempt to clean up this trash pit when more and more plastic products are being created on a daily basis. There has yet to be an attempt to clean up this mess, but I think with enough people and determination this problem can be fixed. I think the bigger problem is that this Great Garbage Patch is not something that is widely known. Once the word is spread, the work can start, the more people the better to clean this up. The one thing I can think of that would be most effective would be to implement a system like the ones used in the fish farming business. Huge nets could be thrown into the water to gather the garbage.
With greater efforts being made to make our cities sustainable, and our societies more environmentally conscious, I believe cleaning up the Pacific Gyre will be a step in the right direction. It will be a huge project, but imagine how many more animals will live!
11 comments:
This is really informative and tells me things I didn't know before. I didn't realize that plastic was really a 19th-century invention! You might be interested in the Plastiki Expedition which is underway in San Francisco. A boat made of plastic bottles will be sailing to the Pacific Gyre in order to highlight the problem. Among other ingenuities, the boat crew will grow its own food on the boat. Here's the link: http://www.theplastiki.com/
Your post makes me curious: who is dumping in the ocean? Are there national or international regulations in place? If not, what's the process for pushing for that? If so, who is charged with enforcement?
I also wonder if it's realistic or affordable to "fish" all this out of the water with big nets. After all, Texas is pretty darn big. And I'm also wondering about your last sentence. How is clean air related to the plastic problem?
And is a great recycling effort enough, do you think? We want to remember, after all, the petroleum used in the production of plastic, the energy and environmental costs of its extraction, the energy and byproducts associated with its manufacture, etc. Thanks for you post!
sorry--that last sentence of mine should say YOUR post.
The marine organisms did not ask for the mess and they did not cause it so why are they having to suffer its consequences? Unlike us, most animals are not migratory and cannot just pack up their things and move to another habitat if their current one is dissatisfying. Instead, they are forced to adapt to their environment no matter how harmful it may prove, which, for the animals in this case, means eating the garbage and living amidst it.
Sadly, more often than not, animals are the primary victims of our wasteful and harmful actions but they do not have the ability to solve the problem. No, that responsibility lies on us. As Pollan states in his novel, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, we humans “are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem” (115).
I must also ask, why do few people know about the Great Pacific Garbage patch? We are in an age of information, are we not? Is the media trying to hide the gyre’s existence so that people will not realize how detrimental plastic is to our planet? Why is not more being done to solve the problem? Since more and more plastic is being manufactured and used literally every second (without then being recycled), the solution cannot merely involve cleaning up the gyre. Rather, the solution must also involve attempts to contain and manage the problem itself. Courtney, you mentioned the use of nets and I find that to be a practical and implementable idea. Are there other people attempting to come up with possible solutions as well? People in higher places that have both the desire and the ability to employ these solutions. Because sure, I would love to purchase a plane ticket and a canoe right now and go out into the Pacific myself to start cleaning up the garbage but that would not be practical. So, surely there must be environmentalists that could begin forming groups of people to start the clean-up process. Surely, there must be something to hold on to despite such a dismal reality, right? Right?
Tiffany, you'd be great environmentalist who forms a group to start dealing with the Gyre! Check this out: http://www.theplastiki.com/
Dr. Seeley, I could not find any information on regulations, but I just got the impression that the trash collected in the Gyre just comes from people littering on the beaches and off of ships. There are fines for littering, but of course many people disregard those fines and do as they please with their trash. I believe the Gyre is just a build up of all of those single bottles and fishing line lost in the ocean and so on, all built up into one section of the ocean.
Tiffany, you bring up a good point about the government hiding this from us. This could be very possible, but I don't even think the government knows much about it themselves. This is something that seems to have been brushed aside by everyone. It seems to me that in this era of information and environmental consciousness something like this should be on the front page of newspapers all the time, but sadly it is not. I hope that we are on our way to publicizing this horrible thing.
Courtney, thanks for trying to find out about where the trash is coming from; I know there's a lot of illegal dumping in the ocean...but littering is probably part of it, too. Since the gyre is in international waters, I'm not sure it's a US government cover-up--more like out of sight, out of mind.
Courtney,
Thanks you so much for writing about this important problem! I didn't know plastic had been around so long, either.
Here's some info about the international laws re: ocean dumping...
The MARPOL (short for Marine Pollution)laws developed out of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships. They address six different categories of pollution(which they term "annexes"), including sewage, garbage and air pollution.
In 1988 participating countries banned ANY AND ALL dumping of plastics into the sea.
The first MARPOL Convention met in 1973, and the second in 1978. Today one hundred thirty-six countries participate!
So much crucial environmental legislation hatched in the 1970s and 80s- the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, for example. We may be in a mess now, but can you imagine where we'd be without such legislation?
Google MARPOL for more info.
Living in Hawaii, and being surrounded by water, I have come to notice plastic bottles and fishing line laying on beaches. This is a problem because when the tide rises, it pulls the rubbish into the ocean. Having beach clean-ups is very important in Hawaii, and is often counted as community service hours. However, it shouldn't have to be a service. Picking up rubbish that you see laying on the ground should be a habit rather than a chore.
I had no idea that all the rubbish floating in the Pacific migrated to one place. It definitely was shocking to read about this issue. I agree, that if we make a greater effort, cleaning the Pacific Gyre will eventually make some progress, even if its small.
I had heard about the Pacific Gyre before, but I had absolutely no idea how large it actually was. Its saddening to see how we've leaving our mark on the earth. I agree that trying to clean up the Gyre is a good way to start taking a step forward however, where is all of the trash from the Gyre going to end up? Back in our land fills? Until we can find a way to some how use or get rid of our plastic and other non-compostable waste, it would be a never ending cycle. I really appreciate how informative this article is. More people should be aware that their waste isn't just sitting in landfills, but out in our natural landscapes continually causing harm to the surroundings and every living thing inhabiting the area. One way to help prevent the Gyre from growing bigger would be to make sure that trash isn't left around but put into the proper receptacles. Hopefully some day soon this will be a thing of the past.
Hi Krystina,
I agree that properly disposing of non-compostable trash will help (and that includes ships, of course); however, the only way to truly halt the growth of the Garbage Patch is to STOP MAKING PLASTIC. Period. Though this may sound radical at first, it becomes less so when we consider that we've only been using plastic for a very short time(as Courtney pointed out,it wasn't even invented until the 1800s).
Juliet, thank you for the info about the legislation. if we already have these rules in place, I bet the government can do such a better job enforcing it. Also, if we could figure out a way to stop the making of plastics, a huge amount of our problems related to the environment would be on their way to over. That would be amazing!
Jill, I'm glad to hear that there is such a great effort in Hawaii to clean up the beaches. Any little thing we can do to help shrink this mass will help.
I'm glad you are all enjoying my post so much! Thank you so much for all the feedback!
Post a Comment