This is absolutely disgusting: "Plastic Patch in Pacific Grows to Twice Size of U.S."
The enormous soup of plastic debris in the Pacific has grown rapidly to twice the size of the U.S. An ongoing voyage into the foul soup of garbage has revealed it is composed of two huge vortices one in the eastern Pacific and one in the western Pacific. The vortices are maintained by a confluence of subsurface currents and by regions of high atmospheric pressure above the subtropical Pacific Ocean.These plastic patches have profound implications for wildlife because birds tend to eat bits of plastic and marine mammals can be strangled by them. Moreover, the plastic can accumulate in areas where currents are forcing nutrients upward - zones of high biological activity. The consequences are deadly to a wide range of species.
As I said, absolutely disgusting. The answer? Stop using plastic bags. Stop buying water in those stupid plastic bottles. Recycle everything. The bottom line is that this stuff is a nightmare that will be around for thousands of years, trashing the planet's environment.
In short, plastic sucks and we need to stop using it (or at least dispose of it properly!). That guy in The Graduate who told Benjamin, "There's a great future in plastics?" He was an idiot.
(I myself am looking for a place to recycle fluorescent light bulbs. I haven't found one in Virginia, yet.)
Recycling has been around for decades yet it is not the norm - far from it. I'm glad to see that it is working reasonably well in some areas but overall it's really not far along. So if it hasn't caught on big time the past two decades, what's different that will motivate people today? Not much. Until that blob of plastic swims up and bites them on the ass, people will continue to ignore the problem. And then, only the people who get bitten will take an interest.
If we want to address this problem it's going to take a lot more motivation than currently exists.
Before we go overboard (pardon the almost pun), let me add some information that may quell your fears a bit.
Many people seem to make the assumption that because plastics last for thousands of years in landfills, the same will happen if they are released into the ocean. This is not the case.
While there are many different varieties of plastic, the type used to produce plastic bags is either high density polyethylene (HDPE) or linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE). Water and soft drink bottles are usually polyethylene terephthalate (PET), milk bottles are HDPE, and margarine tubs can be many plastics, but are often polypropylene (PP).
By far the most common packaging materials are the polyethylenes, polypropylene and PET. While these materials are stable under most conditions, they are very susceptable to degradation caused by UV light such as SUN LIGHT. That is why the ocean environment is so different from a land fill.
In direct sunlight the typical plastic shopping bag will degrade in 3 to 4 months. In the ocean, with wave action adding agitation, the degradation process should be faster. When the bags degrade the plastic molecules (which are long chains of carbon atoms) break down into smaller and smaller carbon chains. These chains are biodegradable and can be consumed by bacteria.
The Daily Kos article perpetuates a long resolved problem with plastics, that "marine mammals can be strangled." In the 1970's, Owens Illinois introced a new way to package 6-packs of cans called "the hi-cone can carrier." This was the plastic ring that slipped over the tops of cans to hold them together. After a few years, reports started to be heard that some animals had been found with can carriers around their necks. By 1982, the polyethylene producers and owens illiois had switched all hi cone production to resins containing their own self-destruct mechanism. Any carriers produced in the last 25 years would embrittle and crumble within a few months of outdoor exposure.
Of course Disney and Pixar continue to use the can carrier as a symbol of our pollution of the environment (See The Little Mermaid and Searching for Nemo).
None of this is to say that we should dump plastics into the ocean. Rather, I am saying let's not be so quick to decide that all plastic is evil. For example, if plastic soft drink bottles are banned, what will they be replaced with? Glass? Aluminum cans? The energy used to produce a plastic bottle, even including the recoverable energy in the bottle itself is much less than the energy needed to produce the aluminum or to form the glass. Even if the glass is recycled.
And while paper bags may be a good choice for grocery stores if your only consideration is disposal, even the head of Whole Foods admits that, because of the large amounts of chemicals used to produce paper in the first place, he can not be certain that paper bags are actually better for the environment then plastic bags.
Anyway, I hope this information helps shed a little light.
...it's hard to imagine an alien archaeologist finding poetry in the remote Pacific atolls awash in virtually unbiodegradable plastic bottles, bags and Q-tip shafts, or in the quadrillions of nurdles, microscopic plastic bits in the oceans - they currently outweigh all the plankton by a factor of six - that would continue to cycle uncorrupted through the guts of sea creatures until an enterprising microbe evolved to break them down.
Also, you can search inside the book here. Again, it's truly horrifying.
I do know about the degradation of polyolefins by UV radiation ... I did significant research on this 25 years ago. I can also tell you that research by numerous organizations, including FDA, have shown that very low molecular weight fractions of polyolefins do not cycle through digestive systems uncorrupted. FDA and most toxicologists agree that if the molecular weight is below 1000 Daltons, the plastic will pass through the walls of the intestines, etc. and enter the blood stream. In most cases, the body uses these "oligomers" as energy.
As to the unbiodegradable plastic bottles, etc., while these materials are not biodegradable in their current form, they are photodegradable and will degrade on the beaches, etc.
Again, I am not saying that plastics should be disposed of in the oceans or that we should not recycle or reuse. I am only saying that plastics are not the total evil that some would have us believe.