Ocean garbage dump dwarfs Lone Star State

The world’s largest collection ocean garbage is growing.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic, floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles — twice the size of Texas, a study published Thursday found.

Winds and converging ocean currents funnel the garbage into a central location, said study lead author Laurent Lebreton of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a non-profit organization that spearheaded the research.

First discovered in the early 1990s, the trash in the patch comes from around the Pacific Rim, including nations in Asia and North and South America, Lebreton said.

The patch includes about 1.8 trillion pieces and weighs 88,000 tons — the equivalent of 500 jumbo jets.

The research was published Thursday in Nature Scientific Reports.

“We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered,” said Julia Reisser of the foundation. “We used to think most of the debris consists of small fragments, but this new analysis shines a new light on the scope of the debris.”

No governments have stepped up to clean the trash, which is in international waters, so privately funded groups such as the Ocean Cleanup Foundation took the lead.

of “It’s a ticking time bomb . ... We’ve got to get it before it breaks down into a size that’s too small to collect and also dangerous for marine life.”

Joost Dubois

Ocean Cleanup Foundation