Voyage confirms plastic pollution

A robotic whale fleet with plastic plankton teeth with an opposite charge to the particles could do the trick. They can fuse the particles in a belly boiler to then be extruded into water buoys created on-site that can be advertised on to subsidize the robo-whales.

That gyre is a nasty relic of what I hope is the OLD MAN as we enter the age of the NEW MAN ORDER.

THX1139

Dupont should be held partially liable because they invented plastic and got Hemp banned for their profit in the process. Now they must be held responsible for the problem of their invention. Short term bottom line mentality prevents corporates from responsibility. They must be responsible for their plunder of the Earth.

We suck.

When was the last time anyone went to the beach? I don't know about the west coast or other places, but here on the east coast, specifically Miami, live a bunch of moronic pigs! It makes me sick to go to the beach sometimes because so many people leave all the crap they bring right on the sand, or in the water. I try to pick up what I can but it would take a lifetime to pick it all up! Who knows if it ends up in the North Pacific, but it ends up in our precious oceans once the tide takes it out. It's all about personal responsibility and respect. People suck, that's all there is to it.

It is sad...People need to start to support and invest in companies like Cerepast ( CERP Stock Ticker ) and keep them alive. The difference can start now. Just think plastics that break down with no impact on the environment. The tech. all ready exists. People just need to support it.

I suggest reading , Thor Heyerdal's, Kon Tiki. One of my favorite books from the 60"s. Even then the garbage collecting in the Pacific was apparent to him and the balsa raft crew members! Almost fifty years later no action has been taken! This World is populated by Corporate fools and their ignorant customers. Jan is radical, but she is on target!

i've known about this for years.

Even if we somehow figure out a way to extract the plastic from the water we still wouldnt have solved the underlying cause of the problem. On top of that where are we supposed to dispose of a pile of garbage as large as Texas?

We have to make a commitment to stop using plastic. Bags, containers, packaging, all of it. It is incredibly difficult because plastic has become so freak'n ubiquitous - but if we do not reject it at the grass routes level, producers will keep using the stuff and we will all be part of the problem.

The mistake here is to think this is some giant ball of plastic the size of Texas just floating around, it's far worse than that. We're talking about millions of tons of plastic spread out over the AREA of Texas.

If it were just some big island of plastic, we could at least attempt to get rid of it. But the reality is that it's a shit load of plastic, much of it the size of small beads, floating and decomposing just below the surface of the water.

And once it decomposes, then it literally becomes a part of the water and -impossible- to extract.

I have personally known of this for a few years. it's good that we are looking at what can be done about it. not all the debris are from land, in fact much of it is from loss of containers off cargo ships in rough seas. apparently this happens a lot and it is a primary way of shipping goods around the world. one thing i found interesting was that out where nothing but plankton live a virtual dessert in the ocean if you will that with the formation of what is essentially a floating island of plastic that marine creatures that never would be found out there are thriving and i would venture that if left unchecked this plastic would eventually collect enough soil and feces to grow plant life and who knows what else. my point being while it is atrocious for humans to treat this world as we do it never ceases to amaze me how the other animals we live with can make so many of our negatives into positives for them selves. anyway that was just a thought i had.

oh and it doesnt matter if you pick trash up on the street...they still put it on a big barge and go out twenty miles and just dump it. and we wonder why fish have mercury in em.......

Project director Doug Woodring said: "One thousand miles from shore with no sign of human life for days, yet our human footprint is now apparent in even one of the most remote places on the planet."

Absolute evidence that even the smallest action - buying a plastic bottle of water - can amount to a gigantic consequence.

Schmüdde
www.schmudde.net
Aesthetic Journal

It would be nice if Google put a high resolution of that area on Google Earth/Maps. That would make people see it more clearly and even chock them (and hopefully open their eyes).

a pile of trash Larger than Texas, thats incredible/sad/gross/shameful.

It's ironic that almost all of the junk in that island is stuff that we could all live without.

Damn sad. We need to do better. Thanks for always posting the important storeis here.

Thanks again Jan!

People, please pick up trash wherever you see it as it will eventually end up in a waterway. Water is life!

How can we look at the pervasive amount of damage we humans have done to our only home and not cry, or be outraged, or angry? And yet, many will not care. They care more about petty things like what advertisers are pulling out of Glen Beck's BS tv entertainment show, or what was found in Michael Jackson's house, or a wide assortment of truly meaningless news designed to keep us from seeing what we have done as if that or any of those distractions really matters in the scheme of things. I think if we collectively put as much energy working to keep this planet sustainable as we do with our political partisanship and theatrics, this would be one helluva planet to live on and we wouldn't need to talk about colonizing other planets while we ignore our own.

larger than the size of Texas. are you f'ing kidding me?

WOAH

It's those goshdarn fishing people and those goshdarn nets again

That is incredibly sad. I don't get why people find it so demanding just to hold onto their own trash until they find themselves near a trash can or recycling bin. I'm not an avid environmentalist, but I care enough about our home planet to throw my trash out and turn the power off when I go out.. it's too easy a "chore" to take care of our planet NOT to do so.

Wow!

We need to forget about spending $2 BILLION dollars sending space shuttle into orbit....and instead spend that money cleaning up the planet we all have to live on.

Space exploaration is a worthy goal and a joint International Space Station is a great idea...but we should only focus on that AFTER we have a joint international planetary cleanup of the 50 billion metric tons of cancer causing toxins in our oceans.

For the amount of money (and time and resources) we spent building the space station we could have cleaned up our oceans of all that toxic plastic.

Shame on us.