The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the size of three Frances. It consists of plastics from Asia, North America, and South America. Some of the plastic is 50 years old. There is said to be 3 trillion tons of plastic (mostly in the form of microplastics). This is a clear example of how destructive of a race we are as humans as well as our love for plastic and the convenience it brings.
50% of our plastics we make are for single use products. Which brings us to an even worse number, 91% of the plastics we make are not recycled. Pretty much everything about our plastic usage is alarming and the environment suffers from it. The Pacific Ocean isn't the only ocean that suffers from this ailment, the Atlantic and Indian Ocean both have their own plastic filled patches but they are not as enormous as the one in the Pacific. Needless to say, there are people doing things about it, they just need more funding. The organization Ocean Clean Up, is leading the charge, but it can't even collect the amount of debris that is released into the ocean every year.
The funding is a very important need, it will eventually pay for advancements in technology that can cure the earth of this problem. The problem is, plastic is so cheap and the world will never remove itself from using it...it's impossible from a business standpoint. What would be nice is, if we can find a way to get closer to 100% recycling of manufactured plastics. Then we will find less finding its way into the ocean's waters. If you would like to donate to the case go to:
Oceans • The Ocean Cleanup and hit the donate button.
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