Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

[babylonsister]

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer


At the start of the Academy Award-winning movie "American Beauty," a character videotapes a plastic grocery bag as it drifts into the air, an event he casts as a symbol of life's unpredictable currents, and declares the romantic moment as a "most beautiful thing."

To the eyes of an oceanographer, the image is pure catastrophe.

In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, said his group has been monitoring the Garbage Patch for 10 years.

"With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping," Eriksen said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm."

The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.

more...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL&type=politics

[hlthe2b]

1. Ahh, more to add to my guilt...

Got to remember to take those resusable bags I bought to the grocery store. I bought em, I use em, but, unfortunately, I sometimes forget em.


What a horrendous picture this story evokes.

[renie408]

5. Hey, if I faithfully save all my bags and take them back to the store to be

recycled, is that OK?

It would probably be better to use the mesh bags, huh? Since then you don't have to waste the energy to recycle them. Hmmm...I just answered my own question. I am the same as you. I keep forgetting to take my bags IN with me. I have gotten them as far as the back of the car, but I remember then when I open the back to put the groceries in the plastic bags into the car.

[hlthe2b]

6. Well, to be honest with you, I cringe at the thought that everyone

uses reusables, because we doggie lovers rely on the plastic bags of others to deal with the "dirty deed!" LOL

[gateley]

9. Go to www.reusablebags.com - lots of options and good ideas. nt

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. A recycler's dream, I would think

Send out a few recommissioned fishing boats with big nets to "harvest" this patch. Return with holds packed tight then clean, melt and process the old plastic into new plastic. Repeat indefinitely.

If you phrase this as a business opportunity....

[soothsayer]

3. precisely!

[long_green]

17. It's the size of Texas...

Imagine what's caught up in it. The entire mass, the plastic, the trapped water, and all the material it has captured must weigh...Jesus, who knows? Wouldn't the mass also be a serious hazard to navigation?

[druidity33]

20. they estimated

3.5 million tons...

[spanone]

4. 'twice the size of texas'

[Karenina]

14. Where's the satellite pic???

Anybody???

[JoseGaspar]

7. Really?

Tow it to Florida.

We will build very nice "bargain homes" on it.

What?

[Javaman]

8. Check out this link if you want to be scared witless...

http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/issues/Issue.06-14-2007/cover/Article.cover_story/print

[The Stranger]

10. Humanity is nothing but a plague upon the Earth.

[Gregorian]

11. That's disgusting.

I have to say something here. And I'm not being condescending or pompous. I designed my life to minimize my impact. That's all.

I watch the garbage trucks show up every Wednesday morning. Actually, I'm rudely woken by the garbage trucks on Wednesday morning. EVERY WEEK the people of this neighborhood, and all around this country, the garbage people throw away is removed from their homes. I just want to say that I have lived in this house for nearly a year. And I took one half of one garbage can to the dump over the weekend. You bet I'm disgusted. What are people doing and what are people consuming that requires them to have these monster wheelie bins full of garbage taken away each and every week.

I cannot believe what I'm seeing. And I know the answer. My question is rhetorical. The answer is that we do nothing for ourselves any more. Combine that with the fact that there are so many people now, and you get this nightmare. A trashed planet. We used to have communities where we grew and made our own stuff. But now it's corporations and bubble packs. And people who are brainlessly consuming.

I long ago resigned myself to accepting that nobody would learn, and decided to just try and get away from it. But here I am in Mendocino of all places, and it's here too. A place which really was noplace not long ago.

[dkofos]

12. I'm suprised the chinese aren't out there scavenging the plastic to

be used for new toys!!

[Karenina]

13. You've crossed a line.

:eyes:

[dkofos]

15. Lines were meant to be crossed.

[Karenina]

21. The little red one is a G_dsend!

:hi: Tschüß!!! :hi:

[long_green]

16. I've been hearing about this thing for a while...

Are there any images of it? Can it be picked out from the air? It is continent sized, after all.
I'm waiting for some national media outlet to pick this story up. "Wait, there's a what where?"

[Ezlivin]

18. Won't Jesus clean it up when he returns?

[Baby Snooks]

19. The Jesus the Republicans love!

Jesus and his old man. The mean old man in the sky. Jesus is going to take us all to heaven. Well, some of us. So it won't matter if we mess up the Earth a little. We are going to heaven. It won't matter.

[OneBlueSky]

22. how long before some enterprising developer wants to build houses on it . . .

and gets a BushCo grant for a feasibility study . . . Halliburton, maybe? . . .

Bush will call it "tackling the environmental problem head-on" . . .