The patch between California and Hawaii is 99.9 percent plastic. Show The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic waste between California and Hawaii, has grown to at least 87,000 tons, according to researchers. The plastics are swept into the patch by the currents and eventually disintegrate into smaller pieces, at which point the particles are eaten by fish and, ultimately, humans. Researchers examining the patch found traces of glass, rubber and wood, but 99.9 percent of what they found in the patch was plastic. Abandoned plastic fishing nets made up almost half the weight of the patch. New York Times has more information: A study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports quantified the full extent of the so-called garbage patch: It is four to 16 times bigger than previously thought, occupying an area roughly four times the size of California and comprising an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of rubbish. While the patch was once thought to be more akin to a soup of nearly invisible microplastics, scientists now think most of the trash consists of larger pieces. And, they say, it is growing “exponentially.” “It’s just quite alarming, because you are so far from the mainland,” said Laurent Lebreton, the lead author of the study and an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a nonprofit that is developing systems to remove ocean trash and which funded the study. “There’s no one around and you still see those common objects, like crates and bottles.” Read the full story here.
LoadingSomething is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Following is a transcript of the video. The world produces enough plastic each year to build 50 Pyramids of Giza. That's over 350 million tons of candy wrappers, PVC pipes, and synthetic t-shirts. While most of it ends up in landfills, 8 million tons wind up in our oceans each year — where most finds its way into massive garbage patches around the world. And the biggest of them all is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If you picked up each piece of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch you'd carry away about 1.8 trillion individual pieces. That's ten times more than there are stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. And it would weigh a whopping 80,000 tons. Equivalent to the weight of three Statues of Liberty. Half of the entire patch is made of plastic fishing nets, lines, and ropes, which come from intense fishing activity near the area. The other half is mostly hard plastics and films, like water bottles and plastic wrap. But don't let the name "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" fool you. It doesn't look like a giant mountain of trash at all. It's actually scattered over a region of ocean that's twice the size of Texas, according to some estimates. So if you wanted to pick up every piece of plastic, it would take you 121 days at a walking pace of 5 km/hr to cover the entire area. Though in reality, there's no true end since the garbage patch is constantly ebbing and flowing with the ocean currents. But let's pretend you could scoop it all up into one place. There'd be enough plastic to fill 100 Boeing 747 planes! And the patch is only getting bigger. It's been growing exponentially larger for nearly 70 years. Partly because once the plastic is there it'll stick around for centuries. Those plastic fishing lines, for example, will take 600 years to break down. And even after they break down, the damage doesn't stop there. Most end up as microplastics that are too small to see with the naked eye. But can make it into the bellies of sea animals and ultimately the humans that eat those animals. Worldwide, researchers have found ingested microplastics in, every species of sea turtle. Nearly 60% of whale species. And almost 60% of seabirds. Plus, more plastic is pouring into the world's oceans each day. In fact, experts estimate that by the year 2050 the amount of plastic in the oceans will outweigh all the world's fish. Think about that the next time you toss your water bottle in the trash because the recycling's full. How dense is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?So how dense is it? Let's assume 80,000 metric tons over an area twice the size of Texas. The area of Texas is 700,000 km² , so that's 8 × 1010 grams of trash over 1.4 × 1012 square meters, or 57 milligrams per square meter.
How big is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 2021?How large is the garbage patch? The Ocean Cleanup estimates that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch occupies 1.6 million square kilometers, about twice the size of Texas, or three times the size of France.
How big is the South Pacific Garbage Patch?Composition, concentration and size
The elevated levels of pollutants can be detected over a vast area estimated to be 2.6 million square kilometers (one million square miles), or about 1.5 times the size of Texas, with the debris found along a nearly 2,500 nautical mile straight line route.
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch bigger than?The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the world's largest collection of floating trash—and the most famous. It lies between Hawaii and California and is often described as “larger than Texas,” even though it contains not a square foot of surface on which to stand. It cannot be seen from space, as is often claimed.
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How much does the great pacific garbage patch weigh
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