Giant Island of Trash

A heap of trash that's twice the size of Texas is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it's called, is 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons. Trapped in a circular course by winds and currents, it's been around since the 1950s, and has been growing tenfold every decade. It's not a dumping ground in the sense that people are flying or boating by and throwing their refuse into the heap. Instead, it's picking up trash that originates onshore, and has since made its way out into the Pacific. Cleaning it up doesn't sound too likely, since the effort would cost billions, but it would be nice if we figured out a way to stop adding to it. Another possibility: turning it into a sort of anti-Disney World. Surely that would convert even the worst plastic-wasting offenders among us into ardent environmentalists.—Gregory Mone

Via SFGate

Comments

[jass]

Hey , what if some one can gather it more tight, throw some other stuff in it and make it an island?
Weird innagibation, eh :)

[DB]

I've gone looking for pictures of this mysterious floating trash pile a few times. Why is this the only picture that exists anywhere? Where are the aerial photos? Is this one of those "guestamated" this is a big as texas things?

[Darok]

Per wikipedia (I know that isn't reliable) there is no verification of the size of this thing. It may just be a weird sort of urbo-academic myth.

[mike]

Why don't we take some the plastic and recycle it. You know make it a cleaner ocean for fish and humans. Why would you want to make it an island anyway. The more trash that is present then the more likely it is to kill the fish that live in our oceans.

[Sam]

I found more info on this topic at this latimes website. It is very informative

www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean2aug02,0,3130914.story

[Kyle Brennan]

Why is taking the responsibility for something humans did always result in um “that would take too much money to fix”. Soon we won’t have a planet to live on and then you can say Um “we are ignorant animals how take for granted are existence!”

[emily]

This "island" is not the first hudge trash mound on the planet there are lots of them, this just happends to be the result of the Gyre In the pacific bringing many tides together which then brings much detritus to the center where this trash is, it has been collecting since shipping from asia started basically. there are two main events that occure that greatly contributed to the pile in 1990 80,000 nike shoes were spilled while transporting them from china to the west coast, then there was the plastic bag incident when a barge spilled containing plastic bags for toco bell spilled into the ocean. The shipping company plus the reciever of stock should be respocible for cleaning up these acceidents, but unfortunatley there is no policy to enforece this it is up to us to sign potitions to get the legislator to enforce a law concerning this matter. Also being informed is important. Most americans are what is called Limosine liberals, which implies that we all are aware of the issues and want them to stop but we actually don't do anything to stop it, like for instance not using plastic bags. or not buying things contained in plastic like prepackaged foods ect. Its up to you to do these things in every day life. AMericans are one of the only contries that supports bottled water, Italy for example had most bottled water companies banned from thier consumer market and most of the bottled water is made in glass, now this wasn't a matter of the plastic but much more a matter of the water itself and the policies associated with it. but bottled beverages is a hudge issue in our society. We are the leading contributors to pollution in the world with developing countries close behind.

[nic]

we should just nuke the island

[nic]

NUKE IT!!!!!

[junkbox]

An old friend in the grocery store told me about this yesterday... I'm going to try and find her aerial shots via google earth etc. has anyone got accurate coordinates on this?.. as stated above why are there no aerial shots?

[Bob]

i found the exact coordinates on google earth they are 33 degrees 22' 49.73"N
and 125 degrees 01' 30.66"W

[Jeff]

If this thing is twice the size of Texas, then it would seem that you wouldn't need very precise coordinates. sheesh

[Andrew]

I checked out those coordinates, and there is something there that looks like a pile of trash, but it is significantly smaller than "2x the size of texas"

[C. L. Vaughn]

[URL=http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vortexgi2yu7.jpg][IMG]http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/9255/vortexgi2yu7.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

In 1997, Charles Moore and his crew were returning from competing in the Los Angeles-to-Hawaii sailing race known as the Transpac. Even though they had been sailing for days in one of the most desolate areas of the Pacific Ocean, they found that human contaminates were a common sight.

This brought on the discovery of what is now called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of the Pacific roughly twice the size of Texas. Plastic flotsam is getting caught in the Northern Pacific Gyre and is quickly becoming an environmental disaster as it is continuously growing.

… Enter Jack Regal, captain of the Greenpeace ship Sea-angel. In this short story Captain Regal, with the help of a volunteer diver, bring home the environmental impact to a guest reporter hoping to write a front page story. Using the dialog between Captain Regal and Hawaiian Gazette reporter Miguel Dragos, you’ll learn about the impacts of this flotsam and what we should do to help battle the threat.

Available on Amazon Kindle, Lulu.com, Alleywolf.com

[bob]

i want to see how big it gets

[Kruger]

Too bad this island is not even the size of LA, let alone twice the size of Texas.. try about 10miles is diameter.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=33.440609,-124.508057&spn=4.156893,6.652222&t=h&z=8

[Ryan]

Both URL's posted about the location being just off the coast of Los Angeles are very wrong. The island sits below the surface of the water and is not clearly visible from space so you are not going to be able to see it or find it on Google Earth. It is much farther north and west of where you are looking. While it is being called an "island" it is more of a massive swarm of floating crap and does not sit in one location, rather a general area where multiple currents come together north east of Hawaii.

[Cheryl Rose]

This is a horrible thing for our planet. How many more years do we have before all the oceans of the world are nothing but floating garbage dumps? I was shocked and horrified to see this on CNN tonight. I never knew this existed. Does no one really care about this planet? Except maybe Al Gore. I wonder what he thinks of this? Does this affect global warming in any way? America is the biggest culprit in the world. We waste more food, plastics and have more garbage than any other country. No one seems to do anything about all this. We are a nation of talkers. All show and no go, as they say. Shame on the government for not doing something and shame on the people of the United States for creating this terrible glob of junk in our beautiful oceans. Its no wonder people are dying from all kinds of diseases in the world. Its a cycle of the fish eating the garbage and we eat the fish scenerio. We are killing the planet and there is no end in sight of the problem. But the end of the planet is in sight at this rate. Maybe this is how the world will end.

[nic]

sir farts alot

[takekate]

everyone is being very irrational about this, i saw bits and pieces of this on tv lastnight and as young as i am, i think this is highly effective to be talking about it. if we could afford or desire to fix the problem strongly enough it would happen, as an individual i cannot do much by myself, but if everyone would stop looking at this like it's going to do nothing and the ocean will be okay.
YOU ARE ALL NOT SCIENTISTS and YOU HAVE NO IDEA IF IT'S THE SIZE OF TEXAS OR NOT.

and to all the people above me saying it's not nearly that size, the garbage island goes deeper than you think. it's not the great wall, in space you cannot see it. and on google earth where it's been said to be located, why would you look there? it's unreliable and it's not going to show it that far up, otherwise don't you think someone or all of us complaining would have see it by now?

ps. i feel strongly about this, and if you don't at least think twice about throwing your dinky water bottle out the window after doing something good for yourself. ie. working out.

look back to that really effective commercial on tv right now. it states "one hour in the gym, one thousand years in a landfill".

kate.

[Shark*Bait]

Kate
That is a great point, do something good for yourself do something good for the earth. Who cares if it is the size of Texas or not? Do we always need to wait for something to get big and horrible to fix it? Lets just over fish until the species is almost extinct then we will find some alternate food source. There is NO alternate ocean.
We need to start thinking of solutions, not debating the immensity of the problem. Positive reinforcement always works, this is a n awesome step forward that CNN is airing it!

[cyn]

go here for a video documentary of the garbage island:

http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1498587029

[emma]

i had a disscusion recently with my class on the garbage island. Recently three right feet ended up on the shore of an island off the coast of BC, the exact one i am not sure. They are now saying that they may have come from the garbage island. does anyone have a response to this claim?
Emma
13 - CA

[concerned for the earth]

everybody is talking about how much this thing
is going to cost to be fixed. I think we should forget the money and fix it anyways becaus eit is going to cost us alot more than just money in a couple years.It's going to cost us the freaking planet earth!so what would you rather do ,give 100$ to save the ocean or ceast to exist? THINK ABOUT IT!

[Daril Talbot]

I live right on the beach in Long Beach, California and every day, I see tons of plastic junk wash up on our beautiful beach. The stuff washes up every single day. Strangely, massive tankers carrying God-knows-what kind of contaminents are allowed to park their vehicles INSIDE THE BREAKWATERS EVERY SINGLE HOUR OF THE DAY!!!...ARE OUR 'GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITIES" BEING PAID OFF TO INVITE SUCH AN INVITATION TO DISASTER???? I see barges with massive piles of smashed cars...just floating by. Tra La tra La!!! Not a word of protest from anyone. We recently had a dead unidentifiable man wash to shore and I began taking some establishing shots when a policewoman with full on Baywatch make up, ran up to me and snatched my little camera...Gestapo techniques...We must not let anyone see our garbage. While our local representatives are glibly enforcing conservation policies like "God Forbid" you are caught watering dog pee off your sidewalk (a $500 fine) multi-billion dollar colamities are invited to park their nefariously dangerous polutants right on our front door. THE BREAKWATER was put into place to protect lives and property...IT IS NOT PART OF THE LA HARBOR...NOR SHOULD ANY FOREIGN VESSEL BE ALLOWED TO COME AND PARK THERE. Like the giant island of plastic crap...we will just wait for a disaster to worry about it...In the meantime...The Long Beach Mayor and other ninnies turn their heads the other way or like
Scarlet O'Hara say, "I won't worry about it today..." Well, I for one am worried.