The world’s rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan
The Independent - February 5, 2008
The plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean will not affect global warming. Since this site is dedicated to the discussion of global warming, I assume that my readers will be interested in this very disconcerting story on the massive amounts of plastic trash that is floating in the Pacific Ocean that resembles a “chunky soup” analogy. The density of the trash makes one feel like “it is everywhere.”
No Right Turn even discusses how this plastic can get into our food cycle and poison us!
The really sad thing about this is that plastic is so readily recycled. It is quite efficient and cost-effective to take used plastic, melt it, and use it again for new products that we can use. Also, plastic is made from oil so it is yet another drain on our precious resources and this waste is unwarranted.
A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
The “soup” is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.
He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. “Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by,” he said in an interview. “How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?”
Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water’s surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. “You only see it from the bows of ships,” he said.
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Filed under: Politics, Technology
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We cant aloud that rubbish damage our planet, lets recycle!