Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bacasper]

Recently on a beach in The Philippines, the floating garbage was disgusting. Is this par for the course now?

The world`s rubbish dump: twice the size of U.S.A.

Posted: 2009/07/19
From: Source

by Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden
(Independent Online)

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris � in effect the world's largest rubbish dump � is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.

The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk � which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags � is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" � a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.

"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."

Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.

more at link

[saw6436]

That is so damn cool. Humans, the most useless species on the planet.

[Fox]

An excellent example of why every government in the world must embrace certain ecological values, and further must create and aggressively enforce sound environmental regulations upon businesses operating in their nation.

This sort of thing is unacceptable.

[djsmnc]

I don't think it's so bad. Let the shyte pile up, we'll die off, and things will work themselves out. After 100,000,000 years it will all have decomposed.

[Kuros]

[bacasper]

[RufusW]

Tragedy of the commons!! World government here we come! Woop!

[Karea]

And I always thought fish and seafood was supposed to be good for you.......

[Fox]

[Fox]

[joeyjoejoe]

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/toxic/toxic-garbage-island-1-of-3

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html


some interesting videos

[Julius]

How about governments funding fleets of clean-up ships.
If ships can control oil slicks they can rein in vast mats of floating plastic surely?

A single piece of plastic can kill unlimited numbers of birds- ingested, released, ingested again. Its a horrific prospect.

[bacasper]

It seems that it will not be that easy. The plastic bits degrade slowly into smaller and smaller pieces so we may just have to strain the entire oceans to completely clean them up.

Maybe they will come up with a plastic-eating bacteria, like they have for oil, but that may just cause some other kind of environmental disaster.

[visitorq]

[OneWayTraffic]

Most current 'biodegradable' plastics don't biodegrade. They photodegrade into smaller and smaller chunks. These bits are still the same basic chemicals.

Plastic may not last forever. It's never been around before the last 80 years, so it's not suprising nothing can metabolise it. This may change. Now that there's so much stuff out there, the chances are quite high that some bacteria will develop that ability sometime in the next few decades, or centuries.

The 'nylon bug' is a good example. A simple point mutation, and boom a bacteria that eats nylon.

And if not, we can always gene engineer a bug when our technology gets there. We're probably about 30-50 years away, tops.