Garbage Island: Massive Floating Plastic Refuse
Did you know that there’s a floating patch of garbage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? It’s called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it’s the size of Texas. TEXAS. It’s unimaginable… but now you don’t have to because a series on VBS.TV has gone to it and has pictures and videos.
It takes your breath away how disgusting it is and how irresponsible it’s gotten. I know some people don’t recycle on purpose because they see it as consuming more energy than it saves and others don’t bother because it’s a waste of their time. I suppose I can understand that (no not really), it justifies their behavior, but how can you justify letting things get to this? It’s insanity. Recycling, at the very least, keeps this stuff out of the water.
If you watch that little clip all the way through, the scariest part comes at around 2:30 when the guy talks about Bisphenol A (BPA - used in hard plastics) making women infertile… shades of Children of Men.
(The series also went to a lot of other places like Brooklyn, Alberta, and West Virginia.)
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There are 7 comments, add your thoughts now!
Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class? Oh the irony.
I just got around to watching WALL-E last night and this post totally reminded me of the world portrayed in that movie. That earthly future of inhabitable trash doesn’t look too preposterous now does it?
Oh well, things will slow down when oil passes $500/barrel and we can’t afford to buy cases of bottled water anymore. The days of cheap plastic containers are coming to an end soon, along with most other disposable crap we make.
That’s… horrible. I’ve heard of it before, but the video is really the first thing that shows the scary magnitude of it. I think everyone should be required to live with their trash for a time - people need to learn that when they say they’ll just throw something “away,” … well, there is no such thing as “away.”
My father went to sea all his life. He was a Merchant Marine captain, licensed for any tonnage, any ocean. He occasionally would comment on the amount of trash and garbage they would see on the high seas.
But wow! He never described anything like this. It must have developed relatively recently, over the past 30 or 35 years since he retired. Heaven help us.
Not to diminish the value of the post, but the garbage hardly forms a floating island, as the title seems to suggest. On the other hand, some estimate it to be closer to the size of AFRICA (that’s the continent!).
Anyway, you can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_debris
Whats an epoch or two between friends?
I love the bit when they’re proselytizing the evils of the found plastic by washing off the plastic with …. a plastic bottle. Nice.
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