Coastalsurvey

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an environmental problem of truly global proportions. Like many of our more persistent environmental issues, this vortex of trash has thousands — or millions — of causes and no easy solutions. Like many of the more intractable problems, it does not fall under any one jurisdiction.  Nor is it easy to see. Most land-dwelling humans only see its tributaries: banks of plastic bottles and other debris pushed up to the high tide line on beaches or choking tidal estuaries.

Sample from 1-mile trawl of mid-Pacific Ocean water.

As The New York Times reported November 9, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP hereafter) is an area 1000 miles northeast of Hawai’i that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. Trash from around the Pacific is trapped in this gyre of current and wind. There are four other major gyres in the world’s oceans that are likely swirling similar cocktails of plastic, as shown in this great infographic by Good. That’s bad because the plastic debris kills marine animals and ultimately passes toxic chemicals into the food chain.

By now the existence of the GPGP is well documented. VBS.TV ran a three-part video series on the Voyage to Garbage Island. The New York Times reporters were sailed out to the GPGP by Captain Charles Moore, who first crossed the area 12 years ago and who has since founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to call attention to the problem. Captain Moore appeared at a TED conference in February of this year to talk about the patch and the video is here. Google Earth tracked Project Kaisei and posted a video of that voyage here. Common Dreams also reported on a seminar about the patch in August.

Like most big environmental problems, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has generated a lot of talk and research, but very few solutions.

One long-term fix would be to outlaw the use of non-biodegradable plastics. However, it would take decades before any such legislation would effect the size or spread of the GPGP.

A few environmentalists have suggested harvesting the petroleum-based plastic for fuel. Plants on land turn trash to energy in big incinerators, so the technical challenge of collecting plastic for fuel in the world’s oceans should not be insurmountable. It’s the cost of such a scheme that is prohibitive.

If the cost of oil tripled tomorrow, BP and Exxon would have plastic harvesters in the water by next year. Failing that drastic scenario, maybe there’s a combination of tax incentives, subsidies and market development that would make reclaiming plastic from our oceans financially attractive.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch developed because humans created a material called plastic that is useful, durable and very cheap to manufacture. If the financial equation could be changed so that plastic became precious, humans would find a way to collect it and re-use it.