Friday, August 07, 2009

Great Pacific Garbage Patch - World's Largest Rubbish Dump!

I first heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch a couple of years ago. This story is now starting to get mainstream news coverage. Basically, it is a HUGE patch of ocean (as large as the United States) where all our rubbish and plastics end up after we dispose of them. It is a huge swirling trash vortex like something out of a bad science fiction movie.

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.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region."

Source: The Independent

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