A Garbage Tip that Stretches from Hawaii to Japan

February 6th, 2008

Via: Independent:

A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or “trash vortex”, believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: “The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States.”

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: “It moves around like a big animal without a leash.” When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. “The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic,” he added.

Posted in Environment | Top Of Page

4 Responses to “A Garbage Tip that Stretches from Hawaii to Japan”

  1. anothernut says:

    “Yes, my child, the people actually made so much waste, it covered an area of the sea as big as a continent. I know it sounds crazy, and it was; because the people then had lost their sanity to greed and selfishness. It was a long and painful journey to come back to harmony with Mother Earth.”

    We live in an industrialized world. The world has been industrialized. I am an industrialized being. What isn’t industrialized will be industrialized. Industry is the way. All must be industrialized. We live in an industrialized world…

  2. Eileen says:

    This is disgusting. “The garbage patch barfs.” Brings the visual picture that you posted here Kevin of the Indonesian garbage trash floating on the surface of a river.
    Perhaps someone should attemt to take a picture of this plastic floating elephant and email it to Ruppert, Gore, Bush I, Clinton I, etc. Guilty them to Do something with all of their ballast, or is it bombast – combined.
    This information however is most likely met with a HUGE YAWN in those who could take this plastic critter down.
    Hmpf. Old plastic piles do not contribute to the campaign – so fuck off you moronic ignoramuses. And stop sending emails, and just shut the fuck up (quoted from the inner emotions of presidential candidates.
    I’m having the best time metioning my thinking here the last few days.

    goddess bless each and every one.

  3. Miraculix says:

    …resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

  4. Ann says:

    Where’s that door out of the matrix again????

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