The Great Plastic Gyre Patch

Plastic pollution is a huge global crisis that nobody is paying attention to right now except those of us who bother to read about it. Plastic finds its way onto beaches, according to Environmental Protection: What Everybody Needs To Know, since there is “4.8 to 12.7 metric tons” (56), of plastic in the ocean, increasing by the day or by the year. However we measure it, many politicians put climate change on 'ignore', in particular, Republicans. The North Pacific Gyre or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France.

With pollution on 'ignore', it is up to us private citizens to do something about the dire straights this planet is in. We are destroying ourselves, but then again that is what the elite and others want. It would seem that “8 million tons of our plastic waste enter the oceans from land each year” (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mh28WHndD8c-taktub8sB1sXV5nOjT36SkMYCDBK52s/edit), January 12, 2016. Scientists try to see how much floating plastic debris there is. Microplastics are so prevalent in the ocean; it is equivalent to the mass of 1,300 blue whales. This problem has been studied since the 1970s, but with very little done to fix it.

This is a huge problem. The more we ignore it, the worst it gets. We need to build fleets of ships that can address the plastic problem in better detail as well as find ways of fixing it. Submarines can also be built with civilian fleets so that the submarine can find means of fixing the problem as well by attempting to clean it up. Trawls are the only way we have now to pick up the plastic. The plastic patches are concentrated in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans. Fewer surveys have been attempted in the Southern Hemisphere but the plastic is no doubt there too.

Plastic drinking bottles will sink into the water when they wind up in the water. Many plastics wind up on beaches, despite the best-intentioned beach cleanup. One-day beach cleanups pick up 5,500 metric tons of trash such as but not limited to, two million cigarette butts. Ocean plastic affects marine life, which is dying off anyway due to pollution of various kinds. To put this problem on ignore reeks of self-centeredness as a species.

We can no longer afford to ignore our environment. Plastic causes entanglement for sea life. We cannot understand the full problems of environmental impact, period since we are content on ignoring it. Sometimes preventing the plastic explosion is detrimental, and we really need to learn how to clean up the plastic, perhaps by using nanotechnology. Plastic doesn’t need to be thrown away because it can be recycled. We have made but a dent in the problem since recycling began with the social consciousness-raising of the 1970s. The Garbage patch is in every ocean, not just the Pacific.

For this reason, we have to attend to these problems as private citizens. The garbage patch is located halfway between Hawaii and California. Some plastic floats better than others, so it gets swept away by the current. The way data is collected now is having a fleet of 30 boats, 652 surface nets that collect the plastic, and two flights over the patch to collect visual and aerial data. Plastics are so dangerous because they are “eaten by marine life. Many fish, sea turtles, and sea-birds have been found with plastic in their stomachs or with internal bleeding” (56). This plastic problem is huge and needs to be addressed on a global scale but since we are busy fighting amongst ourselves since certain parties prefer this, we cannot hope to do much about the problem.

Works Cited

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mh28WHndD8c-taktub8sB1sXV5nOjT36SkMYCDBK52s/edit

Hill, Pamela. Environmental Protection: What Everyone Needs To Know. Oxford University Press. 2017.

https://www.theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/