Green | March 21, 2008 | 5 comments

The world's biggest landfill can be found at sea.

source: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretche...

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Trash. Millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic, floats in the middle of the ocean. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic and in some areas the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one.

How much more do we have to screw up our planet before we start to fix it? The "plastic soup" is divided into two parts, between California and Hawaii, which is twice the size of Texas, and between Hawaii and Japan, which is twice the size of America.
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5 comments // The world's biggest landfill can be found at sea.

  • huntre
    • 0
      huntre  

    • Optimism is like Jello. There's always room for it.
      It's action taken from fear and anger that'll get this kind of momentum going. We already know how to spread fear and anger.

    • 4 years ago
  • stephenthomson
    • 0
      stephenthomson  

    • huntre, is there any reason to be optimistic that the next four years might see the initiation of the kind of global scale clean-up efforts you're talking about?

    • 4 years ago
  • huntre
    • 0
      huntre  

    • I've been keeping track of this through the NDRC and National Geographic and have come to the conclusion that our actions will, eventually, lead to our extinction if we don't demand that all governments finance the clean-up of our oceans. No one should stand by while the source of all life dies. That's nothing less than a slow burning form of mass suicide.

    • 4 years ago
  • utopian_sounds
    • 0
      utopian_sounds  

    • I seen a video about this a while back. Although the garbage is not affecting us on a personal level, we should be paying a lot more attention to it. Sooner or later, the trash will wind up on our beaches. Then, when all it is to late, we will look back and ask ourselves where we went wrong.

    • 4 years ago
  • stephenthomson
    • 0
      stephenthomson  

    • From the article:

      "It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States....

      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."

      That's fucking terrific.

    • 4 years ago
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