WRETCHED REFUSE
17 tons of trash on isle
When researchers traveled to a tiny, uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they were astonished to find an estimated 38 million pieces of trash washed up on the beaches.
Almost all of the garbage they found on Henderson Island was made from plastic. There were toy soldiers, dominos, toothbrushes and hundreds of hardhats.
The researchers say the density of trash was the highest recorded anywhere in the world.
Jennifer Lavers, a research scientist at Australia’s University of Tasmania, was lead author of the report, which was published Tuesday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lavers said Henderson Island is at the edge of a vortex of ocean currents known as the South Pacific gyre, which tends to capture and hold floating trash.
“The quantity of plastic there is truly alarming,” Lavers said. “It’s both beautiful and terrifying.”
Lavers and six others stayed on the island for 3½ months in 2015 while conducting the study. They found the trash weighed an estimated 17.6 tons and that more than two-thirds of it was buried in shallow sediment on the beaches.
The most common items were cigarette lighters and toothbrushes.
She said they found a sea turtle that had died after getting caught in an abandoned fishing net and a crab that was living in a cosmetics container.
By clearing part of a beach and watching new trash accumulate, Lavers said they were able to estimate that more than 13,000 pieces of trash wash up every day on the island, which is about 6 miles long and 3 miles wide.
Henderson Island is part of the Pitcairn Islands group, a British dependency. It is so remote that Lavers said she missed her own wedding after the boat coming to
collect the group was delayed.
Luckily, the guests were still in Tahiti when she showed up three days late, and she still got married.
Lavers said she is so appalled by the amount of plastic in the oceans that she now uses a bamboo iPhone case and toothbrush.
“We need to drastically rethink our relationship with plastic,” she said. “It’s something that’s designed to last forever, but is often only used for a few fleeting moments and then tossed away.”