The World Of Plastic

Oceanographer Charles Moore is calling attention to a "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean that is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States. 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. The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches.


Moore, who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. According to Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the U.S.-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, "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. Because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," Moore said.

According to the U.N. Environment Program, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.

There has been a growing global effort in the past several years to deal with this issue.

In Australia, about 90 percent of retailers have signed up with the government's voluntary program to reduce plastic bag use. They have been banned outright in the state of Victoria and Australia is pursuing a nationwide ban to be put in place by the end of this year.

In 2002, the South African government required manufacturers to make plastic bags more durable and more expensive to discourage their disposal—prompting a 90-percent reduction in use. That effort is now building momentum throughout the African continent.

Ireland instituted a 15 cents-per-bag tax, which led to a 95% reduction in use.

A 2003 law in Taiwan required restaurants, supermarkets and convenience stores to charge customers for plastic bags and utensils. Within a year, it resulted in a 69 percent drop in use of plastic products.

A year ago, San Francisco was the first U.S. city to outlaw plastic checkout bags at large supermarkets and large chain pharmacies.

Just last month, China’s cabinet completely banned super thin plastic bags and is imposing a compulsory charge on plastic carrier bags as of June 1st. Disposable plastic bags had become a major source of pollution for China, with estimates suggesting that Chinese citizens use as many as 3 billion plastic bags a day! The cabinet also announced that they plan on creating more incentives for companies separating bags out from waste for reprocessing.

Whole Foods abruptly decided December to end the use of plastic bags in all its store nationwide, beginning this year.

Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The U.N. Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic. Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. The pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," Eriksen said.