Project sets out to clean up Great Pacific Garbage Patch
More effort is urged to keep plastic out of ocean
The water bottle could be from Los Angeles, the food container from Manila, the plastic bag from Shanghai.
But whatever its specific source, almost all of the trash in the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from countries around the Pacific Rim.
Concerned about the patch – a floating blob of trash halfway between California and Hawaii that’s twice the size of Texas – the Ocean Cleanup project is sending out a giant floating trash collector to try to scoop it up. The first of its cleanup systems will be launched Saturday near San Francisco.
It’s a daunting task: The patch includes about 1.8 trillion pieces of trash and weighs 88,000 tons.
And while many scientists say it’s great that people are trying to clean up the patch, others say most of the efforts should instead go toward stopping the flow of plastic garbage into the ocean.
Try putting 95 percent of the efforts on stopping plastic from entering the ocean, and only 5 percent on cleanup, says Richard Thompson, head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.
Thompson said a global-scale effort is needed to combat the problem.
The trash in the garbage patch comes from countries around the Pacific Rim, according to Laurent Lebreton of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation.
But specifically, scientists say the bulk of the trash comes from Asia.
China recently banned the import of most plastic waste, according to a study published in June in Science Advances.
China has imported about 45 percent of the world’s plastic waste since 1992 for recycling, the study found.
That decision means the U.S. and other countries will need to find new ways to dispose of their trash.
The trash could be around for a very long time: “Most plastics don’t biodegrade in any meaningful sense, so the plastic waste humans have generated could be with us for hundreds or even thousands of years,” said Jenna Jambeck, associate professor at the University of Georgia’s College of Engineering and co-author of the study.
Every year, 8 million to 12 million metric tons of plastics enter the oceans, according to the Ocean Conservancy.
From plankton to whales, plastics affect nearly 700 marine species.
Researchers said 73 percent of deepwater fish in the north Atlantic Ocean had eaten particles of plastic, known as microplastics.
And it’s not just marine life: Rolf Halden, a professor of environmental health engineering at Arizona State University, said that every human being in the developed world has traces of plastic in his or her blood.