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Held just below the surface of the ocean by swirling ocean currents lies the world’s largest rubbish dump. Undetected by satellites the translucent plastic covers an area of the northern Pacific Ocean, double the size of North America.
It is estimated there are about 100 million tones of plastic in the rubbish soup. This amounts to around 2.5% of all plastic articles made since 1950. It is thought that the majority of the rubbish is sourced from marine craft, the rest from countries surrounding the Pacific Rim.
The ‘Plastic Soup’, also known as the ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’, or the ‘Great Pacific Rubbish Dump’ has ever changing boundaries that stretch across 500 nautical miles. With Hawaii right in the centre of it, it reaches from off the coast of California, to near the coast of Japan.
Director of Research of the United States based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, formed by Charles Moore, Dr. Marcus Eriksen, says “The patch is two massive, linked areas of circulating rubbish”.
In 1985 an Alaskan based research team first envisaged the dump. It was then discovered by Charles Moore, in 1997, who was taking a short cut home after a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by. How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week"? Mr Moore, heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, became an environmental activist after selling his business interests.
As more and more items are made in non-biodegradeable plastic objects, up to half a century old, have been found in the North Pacific Gyre. The plastic slowly breaks up through photodegrading, into brittle smaller and smaller pieces, instead of disintegrating.
This turns the dump into a major hazard to marine wild life, as the small particles of plastic are mistaken as food. Large amounts of plastic have been taken from inside dead marine birds. It is through that up to a million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from mistaking plastic for food.
Attracting man-made chemicals, the pollutants act as sponges, which eventually work their way into the ocean. Dr Eriksen said "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It is that simple".
One town in Australia has already banned the use of water being sold in plastic drinking bottles. Without any alteration to the consumer habits of the world, the plastic soup is predicted to double over the next 10 years.
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Dr Wendy Stenberg-Tendys and her husband are CEO's of YouMe Support Foundation (http://youmesupport.org) providing high school education grants for children who are without hope. Education is the only thing that will make lasting change.
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