A Sea of Garbage

plastics do not just end up in landfills or pollute city streets. They also twirl inside massive ocean gyres that draw in debris from the coasts without leaving any chance of escape.

The most well-known is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that floats inside the North Pacific Gyre between San Francisco and Japan. This massive trash vortex, roughly the size of Texas, consists of an estimated 100 million tons of plastic debris continuously powered by currents in a clockwise fashion. Toothbrushes, umbrella handles, toys and soda bottles make up some of the material floating on the surface of the water. Most of the pollution is made up, however, of tiny pieces of plastic resting just below the surface, too tough for consumption by bacteria. Greenpeace estimates that there are one million items floating inside each square kilometer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The result is a sea of rubbish that harms marine life.

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