The Great Pacific Garbage Patch – What is it and what can we do about it?
It is (literally) a 1.6 million square kilometers clump of garbage floating on the ocean.
By Faith Kiross
There’s no surprise to the fact that we pollute our ocean. What many do not realize, however, is the sheer magnitude of the pollution. An example of this is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As the name suggests, it’s an offshore plastic patch that is accumulating in the pacific ocean.
Located between Hawaii and California, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) covers an area three times the size of France, sitting at around 1.6 million square kilometers.
As can be seen, this is not good for our environment. This is why we need to educate ourselves to know what is it and what can we do about it.
How damaging is the Garbage Patch?
According to scientists, the GPGP is the largest of the five that are in our world. It weighs 87,000 tons and contains 1.8 trillion pieces of single use plastic. Around 80% of the plastic that has accumulated in the GPGP is from either North America or Asia., with the rest of the plastic left by boats and ships. Because plastic is not biodegradable, it simply floats on the surface of the pacific ocean.
To point out the obvious, any form of plastic or garbage should not be in our ocean, yet here we are, with five huge patches across the world’s oceans.
It’s terrible already that there’s five patches of trash polluting our oceans. It’s worse when one fifth of these patches are triple the size of France.
The environmental impact that the GPGP is killing our marine life. Around one million sea birds are affected by this, as well as many marine animals.
What can we do about the GPGP?
There are so many different approaches to what we can do. For starters, as consumers we need to reduce our plastic intake. And instead, finding and using more sustainable products.
Although cleaning the garbage patch or cleaning litter from the ocean is a great way to fight this issue. However, that can’t permanently eliminate the problem.
We need to find a solution that prevents plastic from accumulating within our oceans. Afterwards, we can focus on cleaning and cleaning up the plastic in the GPGP. We can start to take small steps towards eliminating our use of single use plastic.
As consumers, we need to not only reduce the amount of our plastic intake, yet as well hold corporations accountable to ensure that they are making their products more sustainable.
Conclusion
This is one of the many environmental issues that our world faces. Although damage has been done, there is still so many things that we can do to reverse these negative effects.
Issues such as the GPGP does not fall on the shoulders of one country or one group of people. Instead it falls on us as a world to come together to take the initiative to care for our planet.