Trash "vortex" found in the pacific ocean...

[April]

Litter turns Pacific into 'plastic soup'

February 10 2008 at 04:49PM

By Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden


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 (900km) 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.

'What goes into the ocean goes into these animals...'
Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which 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 of the United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and a 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.

The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk - which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and bags - is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the North Pacific gyre - a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

'...and on to your dinner plate'
He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of kilometres from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned this week that, unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.

Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings.

"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."

Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half a century old have been found in the North Pacific dump.

"Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.

Moore said that because the sea of rubbish was translucent and lay just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds and more than 100 000 marine mammals every year. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food. Plastic is believed to constitute 90 percent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. Unep estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46 000 pieces of floating plastic,

Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too.

Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles - the raw materials for the plastic industry - are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain.

"What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and on to your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Eriksen. - Foreign Service

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&am...85415175C340800

[blove8.]

This sounds like a job for PLASTIC GUY!!! Daa da DaaaaahHHHH!!!

http://www.plasticsrecycling.org
http://www.recycle.net/recycle/Plastic/
http://ezinearticles.com/?Make-Money-Rec...&id=409971


:crazy:

[Guest]

Can't they string out a boom (i think they're called) like they do to corral for oil spills? What about building an incinerator boat that trawls (trolls?) for the stuff dragging a net?

[blove8.]

Help Stop Water Pollution
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...0772864911
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...0772864911

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=water+pollution

[Guest]

I started watching those clips Brandon, and it has me wondering, what if a deposit was put on packaging the same way it's put on bottles and cans?

Not that I practice this behavior as I don't like litter, but I know for a fact that if I were to drive around the neighbourhood in which I live tossing pop cans out the window, the local homeless bottle pickers would have it cleaned up and cashed in, in no time.

What if we could put a refundable value on packaging? Trash would have value and the homeless could increase their incomes.

I don't suggest it's the answer, but I know for fact no 10 cent bottle or can will lie around my neighbourhood for very long without enriching someone.

[blove8.]

the 10 cent can/bottle return refund sure does seem to work here in michigan. when i was going to school up in mt. pleasant i knew a guy, 'the can man', who was actually funding his grad degree on can collections around campus and town. i'm not sure how he got his study time in because every time i saw him, he was collecting cans somewhere around that area. the dood had quite the system in place, that's for sure.

regarding the refund on general litter, seems like that would be difficult to establish, but maybe somehow there could be bulk rate payments made or something. if there is a good profit to be made on clean up, it seems like the problem would either go away to a large extent or at least be contained to a degree.

reading that this trash vortex contains kayaks and the like makes me want to get out in to do some dumpster diving of my own..

[Guest]

Alberta is pretty advanced when it comes to recycling. Unlike most provinces we don't just have recycle depots and refunds for cans and bottles, but for virtually all beverage containers except milk.

For example, even the little carboard drink boxes kids take to school, you know the kind, comes with a little straw, and a hole on top to poke the straw through.... 5 cents. Wine boxes, the ones with the bladder inside... money refundable too.

People like to knock my province over the alleged bad-eco from the oil sands projects, otoh, we also LEAD the way in recovering other "garbage" and making it profitable.

[blove8.]

dood.. the tar sands are totally fucked.. northern alberta is becoming a complete wasteland/dumping ground (underground) for industrial waste thanks to oil/gas companies (who are making profit hand over fist), environmental front groups, corrupt government officials (and peons alike) and judicial systems who are being paid off by these oil/gas companies. yeah, more proof will be rolling out (and better organized) as time permits, but there is already plenty in the NASWS if one takes the time to immerse themself in the documentation.

i've come to the realization that these 'programs' are pretty much there to help people 'feel good' which in turn keeps the attention away from the massive amounts of environmental abuse being carried out via archaic industry practices and the unwillingness to change to more viable, sustainable solutions.