Listening to the radio driving home today I heard someone from Project Kaisei discussing the travesty that is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, away from shipping lanes, in the middle of the doldrums, lies an immense area of intensely polluted water. Gathered by the circling ocean currents over decades, floating garbage has accumulated over an area some believe to be up to 15 million square kilometers. Much of this debris is in the form of tiny particles of plastic from consumer waste, broken-down into a toxic confetti by the waves and sun.
This is the price we pay for our throwaway “convenience”, our “hygenically sealed” way of life. I urge you to find out more on this issue and support organisations who are trying to raise awareness and find a solution to this atrocity.
Project Kaisei is launching a research expedition into the Pacific Garbage Patch later this year, while the Plastiki has sailed over 2200 nautical miles so far on it’s plastic bottle-hulled journey from San Fransisco to Sydney.
Greenpeace have a campaign against the trash vortex, and Algalita are researching and educating about the problem.
These are just some organisations I found in a short internet search. So far, no-one seems to be able to suggest a tenable solution to cleaning up the problem. Most people say that the only thing we can do is to stop the polution at it’s source – that is to say, stop garbage getting into our waterways and ending up in the ocean.
Wait a second… some Dutch architects have come up with the idea of a Recycled Island. Maybe there is hope?
Check out some photos from the Garbage Patch at The Daily Green.