The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Ten convenient truths about the world’s biggest rubbish dump

Ten convenient truths about the world’s biggest rubbish dump.

1. An estimated four million tonnes of plastic is floating in the Pacific Ocean, in an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The most polluted zone is twice the size of Texas.
2. The Garbage Patch is in the North Pacific Gyre, a slowly circulating vortex of currents revolving around a high-pressure zone between California and Japan, gathering rubbish discarded around the Pacific Rim.
3. Plastic accounts for 90 percent of ocean waste. Every square kilometre of sea contains 46,000 pieces of plastic.
4. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it photodegrades in sunlight, breaking into ever-smaller pieces eventually resembling plankton.
5. For every one plankton in the Garbage Patch there are at least six—and in some areas thousands—of similarly sized pieces of plastic.
6. Each crumb of plastic acts as a chemical magnet, attracting hydrophobic chemicals such as dioxin, PCBs and the pesticide DDT. Fish ingest this poisoned plastic, and the toxins accumulate in the fatty tissues of fish up the food chain.
7. Plastic ingestion or entanglement kills 100,000 marine mammals and turtles a year, and over one million birds.
8. Not all plastic floats: 70 percent sinks to the ocean floor, smothering marine life.
9. In the past ten years the number of plastic pieces in the Pacific Ocean has tripled, and is expected to double again within the next ten years.
10. 2.8 tonnes of rubbish was removed from Great Barrier Island’s coastline in April; 90 percent came from Auckland streets.