Please Recycle Your Trash or Else

It will find its way here and eventually to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch


Global warming is not the only threat that marine organisms face. In the North-East Pacific a vortex of plastic rubbish is taking over the ocean, swamping marine ecosystems and ultimately posing a danger to human life. Known formally as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Eastern Garbage Patch, the phenomena arises because circulating currents of the sub-tropical gyre naturally tend to agglomerate floating materials in this region. Historically, floating debris was broken down by microorganisms, but now a new class of materials has upset this balance – in a word, plastic. Unlike naturally occurring compounds, plastic does not photo-degrade, it simply breaks up into ever-smaller pieces and lingers in the environment as an invisible toxic dust.

Scientists who study the Rubbish Vortex say there is little we can do to clean it up so that even if we stopped using plastic tomorrow its residue will remain for thousands of years. Most of what is there now will eventually sink to the ocean floor where it will seriously disrupt benthic ecosystems. In the future, the twentieth century will be clearly visible in the geologic record by an indelible layer of plastic, as if a vast rain of synthetic meteorites had crashed to the earth.
Complete Story Here:
The Trash Vortex