Where Is The Biggest Garbage Dump On Earth?

Quick, where is the world's biggest garbage dump? Did you say in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Well, that's the right answer. It turns out that there's something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and they call it that because it is an enormous amount of trash floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So the name works. See, the rotation of the Earth and some of the global winds form what are called gyres. These are massive rotating ocean currents found around the world. But the bulk of the world's trash ends up in the North Pacific Gyre, which is home to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Now the GP squared, that's what I'm going to call it from now on, okay, is actually two smaller garbage patches. There's one between Japan and Hawaii, and there's another bigger one the size of Texas between Hawaii and California. And they're considered one large garbage patch because there's a 6,000-mile subtropical convergence zone that connects the two and acts like basically a highway of trash. Isn't that delightful sounding? Now who knows how long this thing has been there, but in 1997, a racing boat captain named Charles Moore, who very much likely wears ascots all the time, found the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And a lot of people say that the amount of trash there is inestimable. While we don't know exactly how much it is, the good people in Hawaii can tell you it's a lot. There are some beaches in America's most beautiful state that have trash piled 10 feet deep. That's a lot of trash, and it's coming from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Now 80% of all ocean-going trash is plastic, which doesn't quite make sense because while we use 200 billion pounds of plastic a year, just 10% of it ends up in the ocean. So why is so much ocean-going trash plastic? Well, that's because plastic takes so long to break down. Researchers estimate it takes about 500 years for plastic to degrade, and it doesn't biodegrade, which means it would break down into its original components. Instead, it photodegrades, which means that exposure to the sun breaks the plastic down into smaller and smaller versions of its original self. These smaller and smaller versions out in the ocean are called nurdles, or mermaid tears. And despite their astoundingly cute names, they actually have a very insidious nature. That's because nurdles not only contain the original chemicals used to make the plastic, they also have the terrible capability of attracting other pollutants in the ocean, like oil slicks, and condensing and concentrating it, turning nurdles into toxic powerhouses. And then even worse, nurdles are eaten by sea life. That's because these little nurdles floating in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch co-mingle with phytoplankton, tiny organisms that are supposed to be there. And sea animals eat phytoplankton, and when they do, they can't help but also ingest some of the nurdles, which means they've entered the food chain, which is not good. When a larger animal eats the animal that ate the nurdle, it also ingests the chemicals, and so on, and so on, up the food chain, which very frequently ends with you, the human grocery shopper, at the seafood case. So what do we do about all this? Well, it turns out that cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other gyres isn't much of an option. It would take 67 trawlers a full year just to clean up 1% of the GP squared. Instead, the better alternative is to control the plastics on land that end up as ocean-going trash. We can find alternatives to plastic that actually biodegrade. We can expand plastic recycling programs to include more types of plastic. And of course, there's reducing and reusing the amount of plastic. So where do you stand on ocean-going trash? Are you for it? Are you against it? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're down there, go ahead and subscribe. And for more great stuff, go to brainstuffshow.com.