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The Pacific Trash Vortex
Oct. 26th, 2007 12:17 pmThere Pacific Ocean has islands the size of Texas in it. Floating islands. Made of plastic trash.
In between the great currents and trade winds, there are areas where the water and wind move sluggishly in great whirlpools, called gyres. Here's a simple map that should give you an idea. The big empty spots in the middle are the gyres. Here's a Google Map bookmark for the North Pacific Gyre.
There are few islands there, nothing for trash to beach on. So much of the great piles of plastic waste floating in the ocean gradually make their ways there, sucked in to the low energy center of the giant swirl. And it builds up there, until in may parts, there's six kilograms of plastic stuff for every kilogram of regular plankton.
Greenpeace has a flash version here for the North Pacific.
There's an even greater gyre in the South Pacific, between New Zealand and the west coast of South America. It's full of plastic too.
I think I'd seen a mention of these online somewhere, but had them impressed on me while reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, which is a book about what would happen to all of our stuff if humans disappeared.
On one large hand, dude. We throw away enough plastic crap to fill giant sections of the ocean. That's horrible. And it's not going to go away for a long time, because nothing in nature can break down plastic. But then there's a part of me that thinks "dude. We could totally go just scoop that stuff up and make something new out of it." But for now that'd probably take more energy than it's worth.
And honestly, it'd be better to try and find replacements for plastic in a lot of things, so our oceans don't get filled with bits of bottles and toys and wrappers and bags that all the animals try to eat.
In between the great currents and trade winds, there are areas where the water and wind move sluggishly in great whirlpools, called gyres. Here's a simple map that should give you an idea. The big empty spots in the middle are the gyres. Here's a Google Map bookmark for the North Pacific Gyre.
There are few islands there, nothing for trash to beach on. So much of the great piles of plastic waste floating in the ocean gradually make their ways there, sucked in to the low energy center of the giant swirl. And it builds up there, until in may parts, there's six kilograms of plastic stuff for every kilogram of regular plankton.
Greenpeace has a flash version here for the North Pacific.
There's an even greater gyre in the South Pacific, between New Zealand and the west coast of South America. It's full of plastic too.
I think I'd seen a mention of these online somewhere, but had them impressed on me while reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, which is a book about what would happen to all of our stuff if humans disappeared.
On one large hand, dude. We throw away enough plastic crap to fill giant sections of the ocean. That's horrible. And it's not going to go away for a long time, because nothing in nature can break down plastic. But then there's a part of me that thinks "dude. We could totally go just scoop that stuff up and make something new out of it." But for now that'd probably take more energy than it's worth.
And honestly, it'd be better to try and find replacements for plastic in a lot of things, so our oceans don't get filled with bits of bottles and toys and wrappers and bags that all the animals try to eat.
