Chris Mooney, 22 March 2018, “Plactic within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is ‘increasing exponentially,’ scientists find”, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/03/22/plastic-within-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-increasing-exponentially-scientists-find/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.55acdefdc6d7
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a huge swirling collection of plastic caused by currents in the middle of the pacific ocean the 3 times the size of France. This mass of small and large pieces of plastic is 79 thousand tons and increasing exponentially. A new expedition revealed that is is now 4 to 16 times the size it was supposed. The patch isn’t getting larger, just thicker and is only expected to get deeper as it is predicted that the 8 million tons of plastic we dump in the ocean every year will increase by 22% by 2025.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the many symptoms of our culture’s obsession with plastic. The effects of plastic pollution is seen everywhere, in microplastic in food, destruction of the environment, and the deaths of marine life, however nowhere is it seen more than in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is a real wake up call for everyone that our use of plastics need to change drastically if we are going to continue to survive on this planet. This study also found that fishing pollution accounted for nearly half of all plastics. Fishing is a huge issue that creates a lot of plastic waste and should be focused on more often when addressing plastic pollution.
I’ve heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it’s becoming a huge problem. I’m not surprised that it’s increasing because some people can just horrible and don’t really care what happens in our environment. I agree with everything you said in the second paragraph. This is destroying habitats and causing many animals to die. It is a wake up call for everyone who uses plastic and throws it away like it’s nothing. Fishing is also a huge issue you mentioned. It’s killing all the fishes and is creating plastic waste. If this keeps happening, the whole ecosystem will fall apart and we will have rarely any animals in the ocean.
Thanks for the comment Alyssa! I agree with you that it is a huge issue and one that is easily ignored. We need to spread awareness and change our everyday habits and international policies to address this.
The pacific garbage patch is a deeply troubling phenomenon yet still one of the most easy to ignore symptoms of our world’s addiction to plastics. The fact is that people can easily overlook an island of trash when it is floating hundreds of miles away no matter how large it is. It is important to address how we will clean up this waste and prevent further production
Thanks for commenting! I totally agree that it is easy to ignore even considering the size! We definitely need more awareness and education on this topic to prevent further degradation of the ocean. The more we ignore it the bigger it is going to get.