Hope Floats, Most Plastic Waste Doesn’t

According to National Geographic, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, the garbage patch is actually two distinct collections of debris bounded by the massive North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.” The massive accumulations of human discards and waste, most of it plastic, are daunting to look at, seemingly impossible to clean up, and represent only a fraction of waste floating on ocean surfaces across the earth.

National Geographic also tells us: “The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio current, and the North Pacific current.

“The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped. A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current south toward Mexico. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshiro Current. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches gradually draw in the bottle.

“The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces… No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure… 80 percent of plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources.” 

The total mass of floating trash is intimidating, as environmentalists are beginning to design systems to trap and remove such accumulations of discards with large ship-born floating encirclements… but at best these techniques can remove little more than 1% per annum of such surface trash under the best of circumstances. Still the waste keeps accumulating. But that’s just what is easily visible to the naked eye. Kristin Toussant, writing for the June 8th FastCompany.com, notes that the mass of waste is so vast that some refer to that accumulation as the “seventh continent.” But there is so much more. She adds:

“A new report from Plastic Odyssey, a France-based project to reduce plastic pollution, busts common myths about the ocean’s plastic problem. Take that iconic image in your mind of plastic floating on top of the waves. One myth is that the ocean can be cleaned up by collecting that floating trash; but that would make just a small dent. In reality, less than 1% of ocean plastic floats on the surface.

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t plastic floating on the sea that needs to be cleaned up. According to a 2019 study, there are 1.13 million tons of plastic floating on the ocean’s surface. But that represents less than 0.6% of total plastic pollution—a small fraction of the 198 million tons of plastic that have been dumped into the ocean since the 1950s. Where’s the rest? Scientists aren’t sure, but it could have been pushed back to the coasts, sunk to the bottom, or dissolved into microparticles.

“Another myth has to do with where all that plastic originates from. If you watched Seaspiracy, for example, you might think the fishing industry is the main culprit. But most plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from trash originating on land, specifically the coasts. Marine sources of plastic pollution (of which fishing is just one) contribute 1.75 million tons of plastic per year, a small amount compared to the 9 million tons of land-based coastal pollution that enters the ocean annually.”

I’ve dispensed with the guilt-evoking pictures of sea birds, mammals and fish fatally wrapped in plastic waste or the bodies of such creatures whose bodies have succumbed to ingested toxic plastic particles. And this represents the more tangible plastic waste, not even touching chemical, particularly petrochemical, leaks and intentional discards that wreak havoc with all sorts of marine life. Add the ravages of climate change, you get a horrific picture of man’s callous irresponsibility and disregard of God’s greatest gifts to every living creature on this planet. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and at the very least in your daily consumption, please take the words “biodegradable” very seriously.