In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, halfway between California and Hawaii, you find the great Pacific garbage patch, a swath of plastic debris, chemical sludge and a long stretch of trash the size of Texas or Queensland. Toothbrushes. Bottle caps. Eel traps. Floating nets. Soap bottles. The list is endless.
But why should we bother? We must bother and take some action BECAUSE some of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals. The physical size of the plastic kills fish, birds and turtles as the animals’ digestion cannot break down the plastic that is taking up space inside their stomachs. Loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of ruptured organs. The toxin-containing plastic pieces are also eaten by jellyfish, which are then swallowed by larger fish, some of which are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals.
Charles Moore, the man who discovered the vortex, says cleaning up the garbage patch would bankrupt any country that tried it. Scientists and explorers agree that limiting or eliminating our use of disposable plastics and increasing our use of biodegradable resources and eco-friendly products can clean up the great Pacific garbage patch.
The garbage made me sick to my stomach if I could I would go there myself and start cleaning up that area out of my own free will
Capitalism could deal with the problem in a libertarian world.
“One man’s trash…”.
This could be a resource for the right industry.
You have time, resources and people. You could connect those dots.
And while biodegradable products are perfected, large ships could be built to harvest and process all that trash.
It would be worth money just reusing the fishing floats.
Semper Fi.
Capitalism is far outdated. We have a finite planet, which is contradictory with base of capitalism.
http://www.theoceancleanup.com/
Great project to deal with this problem
why is it just a government issue? I’m sure there could be some kind of way to organize volunteers. Millions of people volunteer all over the world, and this is a world problem created by people.
“Cleaning up the garbage patch would bankrupt any country that tried it”
Those animals dying because of humanity’s garbage have no concept of money. Neither should we, when we’re dealing with the livelihood of the entire planet, including the human race. We’re on a fast track to extinction because we’re all too damn greedy and selfish to work together to fix the world; we’re too busy spending more money than anything on destruction.
The 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle the most important one is ‘Reduce’. For example if you go to a supermarket/or any shopping don’t use the plastic bags take your own bags or demand only brown paper bags instead. Another one is simply don’t buy soap bottles what’s wrong with the simple old soap bar we all use to buy decade ago & maybe more shampoos/conditioners could be made this way. Anything card board i.e. pizza boxes, paper bags from 10 kg potato bags fill them with kitchen scraps that can be decomposed while absorb excessive moisture for backyard composting. If you have no garden some city councils have community plots while others will take green waste so maybe push them if they haven’t done so it’s a start. Maybe some industrial student or industry person could reinvent the cloth line so that we didn’t need to use plastic pegs.