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The planet's largest rubbish dump
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bacasper



Joined: 26 Mar 2007

PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:10 am    Post subject: The planet's largest rubbish dump Reply with quote

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
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saw6436



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Daejeon, ROK

PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 5:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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djsmnc



Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe

PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 5:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
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.


Yeah, we already have environmental regulations.
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bacasper



Joined: 26 Mar 2007

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
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.

A lot of this is happening out in international waters. What then? Perhaps a better solution is to outlaw the manufacture of non-biodegradable plastics.

And I thought oil spills were the worst ocean problem!

Anyway, from another more detailed and sobering article from the Globe and Mail.

Quote:
Hundreds of myctophids, or lantern fish, were collected during the excursion. All of them had dozens of bits of broken plastic in their stomachs. Some pieces were five millimetres in diameter, much too large to pass through the systems of the tiny creatures.

Lantern fish spend their days deep in the ocean, away from sunlight, and scurry to the surface at night to feed on plankton.

�They have to feed very quickly because they have to start their trip back down again,� Capt. Moore said. �So they're gobbling up a lot of food, they're frantic and they're being fooled.�

They are the most plentiful fish in the ocean, making up about 90 per cent of all deep-sea fish, he said. They are a major source of food for larger fish, such as tuna, and other marine creatures, including dolphins, whales and sharks.

With the amount of plastic in that part of the ocean outweighing plankton six to one, the effects have been deadly.

Further complicating the problem, hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles � the raw materials the plastic industry uses in its manufacturing process � are lost or spilled every year.

The bits act like chemical sponges, absorbing up to a million times the toxic pollutants found in sea water. The plastic flakes are essentially poison pills for fish, Capt. Moore said.

The United Nations Environment Program says plastic accounts for the deaths of more than a million seabirds and more than 100,000 marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and seals every year. Countless fish, it says, die either from mistakenly eating the plastic or from becoming entangled in it and drowning.

Seabird species also dying in scores include albatrosses and fulmars.
A Dutch study of fulmars in the North Sea found 95 per cent had plastic in their stomachs. More than 1,600 pieces of plastic were found in the stomach of a bird in Belgium.

In a stark image of the durability of plastic, one piece found in the stomach of an albatross last year bore a serial number that was traced to a Second World War seaplane shot down in 1944.


Thanks to Arthur
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RufusW



Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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



Joined: 07 Jul 2009

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kuros wrote:
Fox wrote:
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.


Yeah, we already have environmental regulations.


Who's the "we" you are talking about here. I said every government, and I further said said regulations must be aggressively enforced.

I don't believe every government partakens in sufficient environmental regulation, and I further don't believe the environmental regulations that do exist are enforced aggressively enough. My proof? The gigantic layer of garbage mentioned in this very thread.
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bacasper wrote:
Fox wrote:
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.


A lot of this is happening out in international waters.


Which is why this sort of behavior needs to be criminalized and aggressively pursued in every country in the world. This would not be entirely difficult to stop with a moderate investment of effort. Ships carrying waste to dump have to leave from a port, and it would not be hard to keep track of such ships and their activities. If a ship leaves port with an immense amount of waste, and cannot account for where that waste went upon its return, it's not hard to figure out.

Yes, it would cost effort and money. I submit that it's worth it. The very same system could be applied to curtail other abuses as well (e.g. the alleged dumping of nuclear waste off the coast of Somalia that certain others on this forum have lamented). One tool that solves multiple problems.
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joeyjoejoe



Joined: 24 Sep 2006

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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Julius



Joined: 27 Jul 2006

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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bacasper



Joined: 26 Mar 2007

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Julius wrote:
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.

As said in the article, the plastic is a soup of mostly very small pieces, even microscopic (plastic photo-degrades). There is no way to clean it without also removing much of the life forms that live in it, killing them when the waste is removed. Plus the area is twice the size of the US... all that waste would have to put somewhere or burned. No real solution except time (a very long time), really.
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OneWayTraffic



Joined: 14 Mar 2005

PostPosted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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.
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