# data[].attributes.body
why not? send it to the sun, or we could have our very own rings, but... more disgusting..... and it could possibly block out the sun... so uh.... maybe not?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There's no denying that we have a trash problem on Earth - a big one. Over the past hundred years, the amount of trash that we have produced as a global culture is astonishing, and pretty disgusting!

We've recognized the dangers of excessive landfills and the simple space issue of where to put it all. Some people suggest sending it to the bottom of the ocean, dropping it into a volcano, or even launching it into space.

We do have a superheated star at the center of our solar system that could disintegrate all of our trash, but would it even be possible for us to send our trash to the sun?

Problems Before We Even Get Off the Ground

The immediate issue that comes up after any suggestion of blasting trash into space is the incredible cost. There is a popular figure stating that it costs $10,000 per pound to launch something into space, and that's just to the lower atmosphere. To propel something as small as a garbage can to another planet or the Sun would cost tens of millions of dollars.

When we talk about our "trash problem" on Earth, it's no laughing matter. On average, America produces roughly 250 million tons of garbage every single year, and that's only in ONE country (roughly 5% of the world's population). If we legitimately wanted to send our trash to the Sun, it would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars to do so, given our current technology. The US GDP is roughly $16.75 trillion, nowhere close to the cost of such a massive endeavor.

There have been recent advances in launch fuel efficiency, as well as theoretical plans for a space elevator that would drop by the cost of launching things nearly a hundredfold. However, even the idea of spending $1 trillion on garbage disposal per year, when landfills and terrestrial solutions are considerably cheaper, is impractical.

In terms of getting to the Sun, is it even possible? Aside from the incredible cost to launch something all the way to the Sun, orbital dynamics, gravitational considerations, solar wind calculations, and radiation also need to be considered. Passing into the center of the solar system is actually very complicated, and it would be much easier to send something into orbit around the Sun, rather than directly into it.

It would be far less expensive and much more efficient to simply send our garbage straight out into empty space, or even to our nearby moon, rather than trying to calculate the precise movements and countless variables for an accurate "trash can shot".

But Let's Just Say We Did It...

Supposing that the cost of rocket launching continued to drop, and we eventually chose to eliminate waste and garbage from the planet by shooting it towards the Sun, there would still be major problems. Firstly, as we have seen in many rocket launches (most famously the Challenge disaster in 1986), tragedies can happen during any attempt to leave our atmosphere. Given that one of our most dangerous forms of waste is nuclear in nature, it would be a logical choice to send shooting off towards the Sun.

Disposing of unwanted refuse or nuclear waste could be tricky, particularly if the shuttle were to explode or crash, thus spreading trash or radiation into the atmosphere, which could be disastrous to the environment below. The risk simply wouldn't be worth the payoff, considering that digging holes and burying things in them is something humans are quite skilled at.

The Good Side of Garbage

Since sending the trash to space is clearly a bad idea, the solution should be to improve how we handle and dispose of garbage on the planet. For example, recycling should be as close to 100% as possible, because plastics and many other manmade materials do not decompose like organic matter. For example, a banana peel can decompose in as little as three weeks, it takes roughly 450 years for a plastic bottle to break down.

Furthermore, our organic garbage should be used efficiently, rather than thrown off the planet. Organic material slowly rots and breaks down, eventually becoming the soil that the Earth needs for cyclical growth and life.

Spreading Our Problems Into Space

From a philosophical standpoint, chucking our trash into space is essentially passing the buck somewhere else. We would be pretty upset if an alien race began throwing its toxic waste into our solar system, and cluttering up our solar system and galaxy, despite the impossibly large scale of it, seems wrong on pure principle. Earth's orbit is already filled with "space junk", more than 500,000 pieces of debris constantly circle our planet, threatening to damage space stations and spacecraft, due to their rapid speed (~17,000 mph).

The more material we send up into space, the more cluttered our orbit becomes, making it more dangerous for every future launch and mission. We've already backed ourselves into a corner here on Earth with our garbage; let's not do the same thing out in space!

References:

1. Popular Mechanics

2. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Can We Send All Our Plastic Waste Into the Sun? " Science ABC

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There's no denying that we have a trash problem on Earth - a big one. Over the past hundred years, the amount of trash that we have produced as a global culture is astonishing, and pretty disgusting! We've recognized the dangers of excessive landfills and the simple space issue of where to put it all.

# data[].attributes.body
sapnu puas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Montana water quality researchers praised a $1.4 million fine levied against Canadian mining firm Teck Resources Ltd. for polluting rivers that cross the international border.

A British Columbia provincial court ordered Teck to pay the money to the province's Environmental Damages Fund for fish conservation and protection in the East Kootenay River drainage. The Kootenay River becomes Lake Koocanusa where it backs up behind Libby Dam in Montana.

The case stems from a 2014 incident at Teck's Line Creek coal mine about 80 miles north of Eureka in the Elk River drainage. The mine's water treatment facility was cited for three releases of contaminated water that killed bull and cutthroat trout in Line Creek.

"The fish kill was of enormous interest for all of us who track the river system," said Erin Sexton, a research scientist at the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station. "It's taken quite some time for there to be any action on the regulatory side of things."

The pollution releases included dangerous amounts of nitrates and selenium, a mining byproduct that in large doses can cause deformities, reproductive damage or death to fish. Sexton said Montana studies in Lake Koocanusa have found elevated levels of selenium, from the Canadian mines, south of the border.

Robin Sheremeta, Teck senior vice president for coal, said i n a statement released Thursday that the company had improved its monitoring systems and built an effluent buffer pond to prevent future releases.

"From the outset we took full responsibility for this incident and recognize that we need to do better," Sheremeta wrote in the statement. "Following this occurrence in 2014, we undertook a full investigation and implemented a number of steps to ensure this does not happen again."

Elk River coal mostly goes to Asian markets, where it is used for smelting steel rather than energy production. In May, the British Columbia Auditor General reported that mining companies and the province's regulatory agencies were doing a poor job of complying with mining and pollution regulations and laws.

The Canadian environmental group Wildsight has been monitoring the case since it was brought to court three years ago. Wildsight Executive Director Robyn Duncan said cleaning up the mine pollution involved more than a specific fish kill.

"While much effort has gone into tackling the issue of dangerous selenium contamination running off from waste rock dumps at the Elk Valley coal mines, the problem is still far from solved," Duncan wrote in an email. "This 2014 failure and other ongoing issues at the Line Creek water treatment plant show that the selenium problem needs much more attention."

Flathead Lake Biological station bull trout research aquatic ecologist Clint Muhlfeld said the Elk River has already shown changes in its chemistry related to mine waste. The addition of nitrates act like fertilizer, which has resulted in algae blooms, and suppressed native stonefly insect populations. And while small amounts of selenium are needed for health, large amounts accumulate in top predators like bull trout, which are already suffering from other threats to their habitat.

"That's been something that both our countries have been looking at throughout the entire connected ecosystems," Muhlfeld said. "It's like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. There's a critical tipping point where you see a lot of effects up the food chain."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Canadian coal firm fined $1.4 million for water pollution affecting Montana

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Montana water quality researchers praised a $1.4 million fine levied against Canadian mining firm Teck Resources Ltd. for polluting rivers that cross the international border. A British Columbia provincial court ordered Teck to pay the money to the province's Environmental Damages Fund for fish conservation and protection in the East Kootenay River drainage.

# data[].attributes.body
yo like plastic is causing global warming which is like totes bad

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wikimedia Commons

Though burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean's surface.

Lanternfish ( aka myctophids) are only a few inches long typically but so ubiquitous that they account for over half the ocean's total fish-mass. They are vital to the ocean's ability to sequester more carbon than all the world's forests do on land through a daily mass migration playing out in all seven seas.

By day, lanternfish avoid predators in deep, dimly lit waters, then ascend nightly to the surface to gorge on carbon-rich plankton before descending back down where they deposit their carbon-rich poop. They also sequester carbon when eaten by larger fish.

This migratory ritual is central to the efficacy of marine environments in reducing human-caused CO ₂ emissions in the atmosphere - by an estimated 20-35 percent.

Thus, anything harmful to lanternfish could hinder the ocean's capacity to act as a carbon sink. Alarming evidence that small bits of floating plastic debris resemble the lanternfish's plankton diet could spell trouble for them and, consequently, the climate.
Lanternfish are consuming ocean plastics

Most plastics are still derived from petroleum and natural gas and, for practical purposes, are non-biodegradable, even though they fragment during weathering into progressively smaller pieces.

Marine debris accumulates in circulating ocean convergence zones called gyres. Since the groundbreaking discovery in 1999 that plastic debris outweighed zooplankton in the surface waters of the N. Pacific gyre by a ratio of 6:1, there has been concern that small plastic fragments might be mistaken for food by plankivorous sea life.

A follow-up study revealed that more than a third of the stomachs of lanternfish captured at the ocean's surface in the N. Pacific gyre contained plastic fragments, similar in size (1-3 mm) and color (clear, white and blue) to the area's zooplankton.

Ingestion of plastics by lanternfish likely explains an otherwise head-scratching finding. Mass quantities of plastics are disappearing from the surface waters of all five of the world's major gyres, mostly debris about 2 mm.

Intestinal blockage, malnutrition and starvation are obvious dangers of consuming plastic debris, though chemicals associated with marine plastics might pose greater threats.

Oily pollutants in seawater adsorb to the surface of plastics. Once ingested, there is potential for transfer up the food chain as smaller fish are eaten by larger ones.

Threat also stems from the building blocks of some polymers. Polycarbonate plastic, for example, is derived from BPA (bisphenol A), an estrogen mimicking endocrine disruptor that can produce developmental derangements. The basic constituents of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene plastics are known or suspected carcinogens.

The myriad of additives which impart desired properties to plastic products add additional concerns because they can leach out of ingested plastics into an organism's tissues. Phthalate plasticizers and polybrominated flame retardants are common additives which interfere with hormonal systems in mammals, for example.

A recent study documented contamination of lanternfish tissue with chemicals both manufactured into plastics and adsorbed from seawater.

Furthermore, the buoyancy of plastics might interfere with lanternfish's ability to complete its migration from the surface back down to deeper waters.
Ocean plastic pollution to increase further
Half of all plastics that ever existed were produced in just the last 13 years, according to a first-ever accounting of all plastic created anywhere on Earth. Of the 6300 million metric tons of plastic waste ever generated through 2015, roughly one-fifth has been recycled or incinerated, leaving four-fifths amassed in landfills or the natural environment.

If current trends prevail through 2050, landfills and the natural environment will have accumulated 12,000 million metric tons of plastic waste.

Another first-ever study estimated how much plastic waste is entering the ocean yearly from the discards of people in coastal countries worldwide - between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons.

Depending on buoyancy, some plastics float, others sink to the bottom or distribute throughout the water column. Given the ocean's expanse and influx rate of new plastics, open ocean cleanup schemes are not a feasible solution.
The Solution

At the heart of the climate crisis is mankind's dysfunctional relationship to fossil fuels. As in any bad relationship, ignoring the problem only kicks the can down the road while the problem continues to fester.

The road here leads to greater climate instability which portends more violent storms and droughts, spread of human diseases, mass species extinction and social, economic and political upheavals.

The needed relational shift is to transition from an economy based on fossil fuels as a primary source of energy and feedstock for manufactured goods to one thriving on renewable energy and manufactured goods which are biodegradable or easily recycled. Even conservative economists widely view a simple carbon tax as the most workable solution.
Sarah "Steve" Mosko is a long-time resident of Orange County and writer focused on the science behind environmental issues and solutions. Opinions expressed in editorials belong to the authors and not Voice of OC. Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue or others please contact Voice of OC Involvement Editor Theresa Sears at TSears@voiceofoc.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mosko: Plastic Ocean Pollution a Driver of Climate Change?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wikimedia Commons Though burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean's surface.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean.

# data[].attributes.body
Victor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Claire Le Guern
Last updated in November 2019.

Introduction

The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world's oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land.

For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years.(See: Worldwatch Institute - January 2015). In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by the end of 2015.

Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature.

Although inhabited and remote, South Sentinel island is covered with plastic! Plastic pollution and marine debris, South Sentinel Island, Bay of Bengal. Photo source: © SAF - Coastal Care

A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, staggeringly. Tons of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans.

Published in the journal Science in February 2015, a study conducted by a scientific working group at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. It's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2025, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of coastline. So the cumulative input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times the 8 million metric tons estimate - 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world!

Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. Although some delivery services in Europe will use paper packaging. However, Midways' isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midways' beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place of the sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore.

Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colorful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach-size plastic piles are still present, intact. Witnesses have watched in horror seabirds choosing plastic pieces, red, pink, brown and blue, because of their similarity to their own food. It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there.

Albatross, victim of plastic ingestion. Photo: Unknown.

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life on shore and off shore. In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes.

The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP), estimated that land-based sources account for up to 80 percent of the world's marine pollution, 60 to 95 percent of the waste being plastics debris.

However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the center of major ocean vortices forming "garbage patches", i.e. larges masses of ever-accumulating floating debris fields across the seas. The most well known of these "garbage patches" is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. Yet some others large garbage patches are highly expected to be discovered elsewhere, as we'll see further.

The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean.

Slow, silent, omnipresent, ever increasing, more toxic than previously thought, the plastic pollution's reality bears sobering consequences, as recently unveiled by the report of Japanese chemist Katsuhiko Saido at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in August 2009 and the findings from the Project Kaisei and Scripps (Seaplex) scientific cruise-expeditions collecting seawater samples from the Great Garbage Patch. Both, the reports and expeditions uncovered new evidence of how vast and "surprisingly" (as it was termed at the ACS meeting) toxic the plastic presence in the marine environment is.

Extremely littered beach in northern Norway. Photo source: ©© Bo Eide

Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that does not fully break down, in other terms, not biodegradable. In 2004, a study lead by Dr Richard Thompson at the University of Plymouth, UK, reported finding great amount of plastic particles on beaches and waters in Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. They reported that small plastic pellets called "mermaids tears", which are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste, have indeed spread across the world's seas. Some plastic pellets had fragmented to particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while some cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. They are not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it, and ultimately are ingested by marine animals and zooplankton (Plankton that consists of tiny animals, such as rotifers, copepods, and krill, larger animals eggs and larvae's and of microorganisms once classified as animals, such as dinoflagellates and other protozoans.). This plastic micro-pollution, with its inherent toxicity and consequences on the food chain, had yet to be studied...

Dr Saido's study was the first one to look at what actually happens over the years to these tons of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans. The study presents an alarming fact: these tons of plastic waste reputed to be virtually indestructible, do decompose with surprising speed, at much lower temperature than previously thought possible, and release toxic substances into the seawater, namely bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. These chemicals are considered toxic and can be metabolized subsequent to ingestion, leading Dr Saido to state "...plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contaminations that will persist long into the future".

This past August a different study, from a group of oceanography students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), UCSD, accompanied by the international organization Project Kaisei's team, embarked on two vessels, New Horizon and Kaisei, through the North Pacific Ocean to sample plastic debris and garbage. SIO director Tony Haymet described the trip as " ...a forage into the great plastic garbage patch in the north." To summarize the scientific data collected on the ship, Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on New Horizon, stated: "We did find debris... coming up in our nets in over 100 consecutive net tows over a distance of 1,700 miles... It is pretty shocking." She said, "[There is] not a big island, not a garbage dump [that we] can really see easily." She described it more as a place where large debris floats by a ship only occasionally, but a lot of tiny pieces of plastic exist below the surface of the water. "Ocean pretty much looks like ocean," she said. "The plastic fragments are mostly less than a quarter inch long and are below the surface. It took at first a magnifying-glass to see the true extent of plastic damage in the North Pacific."

The overwhelmingly largest unquantifiable plastic mass is just made of confetti-like fragmented pieces of plastic.

In a press conference in September 2009, the director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Maziar Movassaghi, referring to Project Kaisei's findings, held a small glass bottle filled with seawater sampled at the Great North Garbage Patch. Inside was murky seawater with hundreds of fragmented plastics pieces: "That is what we have to stop".

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms, are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. The world population "... (is) eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste." (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress).

Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

The scientists from Project Kaisei and Scripps hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of these debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger." We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet.

The "Silent World" is shedding mermaid tears. A plastic-poison has undeniably been instilled by us, prompting an unwilling and illegitimate confrontation of two titans: one synthetic (plastic), the other oceanic. The crisis is of massive proportion. An unprecedented plastic tide has occurred, pervasively affecting the world's oceans, beaches, coasts, seafloor, animals and ultimately, us.

I: The Great Plastic Tide: Magnitude, Scope, Extent

A full understanding of the magnitude and scope of this plastic pollution starts with clear definitions as to what and why it is happening. Thus, we will define the notions of marine debris, gyres, and oceanic garbage patches, or giant floating marine debris field, as first discovered in the North Pacific by Captain Charles Moore's, since referred to as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP).

Marine Debris and Plastic

Krichim, Boat in plastic, April 25, 2009. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff

Marine Debris

The term marine debris has been used for at least 25 years to refer to man-made materials that have been discarded or lost into the ocean. The earliest references come from the 1984 Workshop on the Impacts and Fate of Marine Debris (Shomura and Yoshida 1985). This workshop came out of a 1982 request from the Marine Mammal Commission to the National Marine Fisheries Service to examine the impacts of marine debris. At that time, the focus of research was primarily on derelict fishing gear. Keep in mind that this was prior to the implementation of both the high-seas driftnet ban and MARPOL Annex V.

Other terms used prior to 1984 include the following: man-made debris (Feder et all 1978), synthetic debris (Balazs 1979), plastic litter (Merrell 1980), floating plastic debris (Morris 1980), man-made objects (Shaughnessy 1980, Venrick et al 1973), and debris (Scordino and Fisher 1983).

It would appear that the term debris was being used in these articles by academics as something discarded: litter.

The term marine debris encompasses more than plastic, including metals (derelict vessels, dumped vehicles, beverage containers), glass (light bulbs, beverage containers, older fishing floats), and other materials (rubber, textiles, lumber). Plastic certainly makes up the majority of floating litter, but in some areas the debris on the ocean floor may contain sizeable amounts of those other denser types.

Scientists have similarly and more simply defined marine debris as, any manufactured or processed solid waste material that enters the ocean environment from any source (Coe & Rogers, 1997). Marine debris is definitely characterized as human-created waste that has deliberately or accidentally become afloat. They tend to accumulate at the centre of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter.

The US Congress passed a bill in 2006, The Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act, to create a program to address the marine debris pollution. One of the requirements in the bill was for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the U.S. Coast Guard, to promulgate a definition of marine debris for the purposes of the Act. Thus, USCG and NOAA drafted and published a definition of marine debris in September 2009. The definition is this: "Any persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, disposed of or abandoned into the marine environment or the Great Lakes." Marine debris can come in many forms, from a plastic soda bottle to a derelict vessel. Types and components of marine debris include plastics, glass, metal, Styrofoam, rubber, derelict fishing gear, and derelict vessels.

UNEP has defined marine debris, or marine litter, as "any persistent, manufactured, processed, or solid material discarded, disposed of, or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment." This is an even more global and comprehensive definition, as it does include the marine and correlated coastal impact of the aforementioned litter.

Plastic pollution covering the shore, Morocco.Photo: © SAF - Coastal Care

As we mentioned supra, land-based sources of debris account for up to 80 percent of the world's marine pollution. Such debris is unquestionably one of the world's most pervasive pollution problems affecting our beaches, coasts, oceans, seafloors, inland waterways and lands. It affects the economies and inhabitants of coastal and waterside communities worldwide. The effect of coastal littering is obviously compounded by vectors, such as rivers and storm drains, discharging litter from inland urban areas. Obviously, ocean current patterns, climate and tides, and proximity to urban centers, industrial and recreational areas, shipping lanes, and commercial fishing grounds influence the types and amount of debris that is found in the open ocean or collected along beaches, coasts and waterways, above and below the water's edge.

The other 20 percent of this debris is from dumping activities on the water, including vessels (from small power and sailboats to large transport ships carrying people and goods), offshore drilling rigs and platforms, and fishing piers.

Over the past 60 years, organic materials, once the most common form of debris, have yielded to synthetic elements as the most abundant material in solid waste. Marine litter is now 60 to 80 percent plastic, reaching 95 percent in some areas, according to a report by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (created by Charles Moore), published in October 2008 in Environmental Research.

Citarum River, flowing to the Sea, is the main source of houselhold water for Jakarta.(14million people). Photo source: photobucket

Around and around, worldwide, at distant seas, or merely bobbing among the waves before washing up ultimately on shore, a daily and ever too common plastic spectacle is unveiled: bottles, plastic bags, fishnets, clothing, lighters, tires, polystyrene, containers, plastics shoes, just a myriad of man-made items, all sharing a common origin: us.

Yearly data adds to the despondent reality of how extensively the plastic tide is increasingly affecting world's beaches and coasts. Launched in 1986 by the Ocean Conservancy, the Center for Marine Conservation's annual International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) has grown into the world's largest volunteer effort to collect data on the marine environment. Held the third Saturday of each September, the International Coastal Cleanup engages the public to remove trash and debris from the coasts, beaches, waterways, underwater, and on lands to identify the sources of debris. It is a compelling global snapshot of marine debris collected on one day at thousands of sites all over the world. The 2008, 23rd ICC reported that 104 countries and locations, from Bahrain to Bangladesh, and in 42 US States, from southern California to the rocky coast of Maine, had participated. The overwhelming percentage of debris collected was plastics and smoking paraphernalia. The 2008 report states that plastic litter has increased by 126 percent since ICC first survey in 1994. The top 3 items found in 2008 were cigarettes butts, plastic bags, and food wrappers/containers.

Durable and slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products, from containers for beverage bottles, packing straps and tarps, and synthetic nylon materials used in fishing line, all become debris with staying power. Plastics debris accumulates because it does not biodegrade as many other substances do; although it will photo degrade on exposure to sunlight and does decompose, more rapidly than previously thought. (We will explain these processes as we study the nature and properties of plastic itself infra.).

In addition, most of these plastic waste items are highly buoyant, allowing them to travel in currents for thousands of miles, endangering marine ecosystems and wildlife along the way. Marine debris is a global transboundary pollution problem.

Icelandic shore. The marine area around Iceland is considered as one of the cleanest of the world. Photo Source: Clean up the Coastline, Veraldarvinir

The instillation of plastic in an oceanic world vests a terrible reality. Because of the properties of plastic as a synthetic material and because of the absence of boundary, vastness, currents and winds at seas, this resilient polluting material is being spread worldwide by an even more powerful vehicle, the seas. It appears then daunting, impossible, a priori, to control, efficiently clean-up, remedy effectively, even sufficiently study the plastic pollution. This unwilling confrontation of titans, one plastic the other oceanic, has become ineluctably a crisis of massive proportion.

Plastic

The paucity of concerted and definitive scientific data/research in this matter is staggering compared to the extent of the problem.
Only in 1997, with Captain Charles Moore's discovery, was the plastic waste pollution in the ocean widely brought to media light and finally began to receive more serious attention from the public and the scientific world, stepping the way to more exhaustive research about plastic and its consequences and effects when entering marine life.

Of the 260 million tons of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the Ocean, according to a Greenpeace report (Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, 2006). Seventy percent of the mass eventually sinks, damaging life on the seabed. The rest floats in open seas, often ending up in gyres, circular motion of currents, forming conglomerations of swirling plastic trash called garbage patches, or ultimately ending up washed ashore on someone's beach.

But the washed up or floating plastic pollution is a lot more than an eyesore or a choking/entanglement hazard for marine animals or birds. Once plastic debris enters the water, it becomes one of the most pervasive problems because of plastic's inherent properties: buoyancy, durability (slow photo degradation), propensity to absorb waterborne pollutants, its ability to get fragmented in microscopic pieces, and more importantly, its proven possibility to decompose, leaching toxic Bisphenol A (BPA) and other toxins in the seawater.

"Plastics are a contaminant that goes beyond the visual", says Bill Henry of the Long Marine Laboratory, UCSC.

Seal trapped in plastic pollution. Photo: ©© Tedxgp2

But before we develop further the realities and consequences of the plastic-covered beaches, seafloor and plastic-instilled seawater, it is necessary to present simple facts about plastic itself.

Facts About Plastic

What is plastic?

A simple definition could be: any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened, including many types of resins, resinoids, polymers, cellulose derivatives, casein materials, and proteins: used in place of other materials, as glass, wood, and metals, in construction and decoration, for making many articles, as coatings, and, drawn into filaments, for weaving. They are often known by trademark names, as Bakelite, Vinylite, or Lucite.

In chemistry, plastics are large molecules, called polymers, composed of repeated segments, called monomers, with carbon backbones. A polymer is simply a very large molecule made up of many smaller units joined together, generally end to end, to create a long chain. The smallest building block of a polymer is called a monomer. Polymers are divided into two distinct groups: thermoplastics (moldable) and thermosets (not). The word "plastics" generally applies to the synthetic products of chemistry.

Alexander Parkes created the first man-made plastic and publicly demonstrated it at the 1862 Great International Exhibition in London. The material, called parkesine, was an organic material derived from cellulose that, once heated, could be molded and retained its shape when cooled.
Many, but not all, plastic products have a number - the resin identification code - molded, formed or imprinted in or on the container, often on the bottom. This system of coding was developed in 1988 by the U.S.-based Society of the Plastics Industry to facilitate the recycling of post-consumer plastics. It is indeed, quite interesting to go through the fine lines.

1. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) - Used in soft drink, juice, water, beer, mouthwash, peanut butter, salad dressing, detergent, and cleaner containers. Leaches antimony trioxide and (2ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP).

2. DEHP is an endocrine disruptor that mimics the female hormone estrogen. It has been strongly linked to asthma and allergies in children. It may cause certain types of cancer and it has been linked to negative effects on the liver, kidney, spleen, bone formation, and body weight. In Europe, DEHP has been banned since 1999 from use in plastic toys for children under the age of three.

3. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) - Used in opaque milk, water, and juice containers, bleach, detergent and shampoo bottles, garbage bags, yogurt and margarine tubs, and cereal box liners. Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

4. Polyvinyl chloride (V or Vinyl or PVC) - Used in toys, clear food and non-food packaging (e.g., cling wrap), some squeeze bottles, shampoo bottles, cooking oil and peanut butter jars, detergent and window cleaner bottles, shower curtains, medical tubing, and numerous construction products (e.g., pipes, siding). PVC has been described as one of the most hazardous consumer products ever created. Leaches di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) or butyl benzyl phthalate (BBzP), depending on which is used as the plasticizer or softener (usually DEHP). DEHP and BBzP are endocrine disruptors mimicking the female hormone estrogen; have been strongly linked to asthma and allergic symptoms in children; may cause certain types of cancer; and linked to negative effects on the liver, kidney, spleen, bone formation, and body weight. In Europe, DEHP, BBzP, and other dangerous phthalates have been banned from use in plastic toys for children under three since 1999. Not so elsewhere, including Canada and the United States.
Dioxins are unintentionally, but unavoidably, produced during the manufacture of materials containing chlorine, including PVC and other chlorinated plastic feedstocks. Dioxin is a known human carcinogen and the most potent synthetic carcinogen ever tested in laboratory animals. A characterization by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of cancer causing potential evaluated dioxin as over 10,000 times more potent than the next highest chemical (diethanol amine), half a million times more than arsenic, and a million or more times greater than all others.

5. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) - Used in grocery store, dry cleaning, bread and frozen food bags, most plastic wraps, and squeezable bottles (honey, mustard). Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

6. Polypropylene (PP) - Used in ketchup bottles, yogurt and margarine tubs, medicine and syrup bottles, straws, and Rubbermaid and other opaque plastic containers, including baby bottles. Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

7. Polystyrene (PS) - Used in Styrofoam containers, egg cartons, disposable cups and bowls, take-out food containers, plastic cutlery, and compact disc cases. Leaches styrene, an endocrine disruptor mimicking the female hormone estrogen, and thus has the potential to cause reproductive and developmental problems. Long-term exposure by workers has shown brain and nervous system effects and adverse effects on red blood cells, liver, kidneys, and stomach in animal studies. Also present in secondhand cigarette smoke, off gassing of building materials, car exhaust, and possibly drinking water. Styrene migrates significantly from polystyrene containers into the container's contents when oily foods are heated in such containers.

8. Other - This is a catchall category that includes anything that does not come within the other six categories. As such, one must be careful in interpreting this category because it includes polycarbonate - a dangerous plastic - but it also includes the new, safer, biodegradable bio-based plastics made from renewable resources such as corn and potato starch and sugar cane. Polycarbonate is used in many plastic baby bottles, clear plastic sippy cups, sports water bottles, three and five gallon large water storage containers, metal food can liners, some juice and ketchup containers, compact discs, cell phones, computers. Polycarbonate leaches Bisphenol A (some effects described above) and numerous studies have indicated a wide array of possible adverse effects from low-level exposure to Bisphenol A: chromosome damage in female ovaries, decreased sperm production in males, early onset of puberty, various behavioral changes, altered immune function, and sex reversal in frogs.

Rob Krebs of the American Plastics Council notes that people value plastics for exactly what creates the most problems at sea and on lands: their durability.

Plastic debris, of all sizes and shapes, is a transboundary pollution problem with a powerful vehicle, the ocean.

Vacha Dam near town of Krichim, April 25, 2009. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff

Buoyancy

Plastics travel long distances. Their distribution in the oceans isn't uniform, yet they are omnipresent from the Polar Regions to the Equator. Scientists are still refining methods to detect and analyze the materials. A good example of plastic debris' buoyancy is as follows. In 1992, twenty containers full of rubber ducks were lost overboard from a ship traveling from China to Seattle. By 1994, some had been tracked to Alaska, while others reached Iceland in 2000. The ducks (with a distinctive logo on their base) have been sighted in the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (Ebbesmeyer, 2003).

Photodegradation Vs. Biodegradation

Plastic is generally a durable material. Its durability has made the culprit of the problem since it is considered resistant to natural biodegradation processes, i.e. the microbes that break down other substances do not recognize plastic as food. Yet plastic can be fragmented with the effects of UV, being broken down by light in smaller and smaller debris over time.

Biodegradation, the breaking down of organic substances by natural means, happens all the time in nature. All plant-based, animal-based, or natural mineral-based substances will over time biodegrade. In its natural state raw crude oil will biodegrade, but man-made petrochemical compounds made from oil, such as plastic, will not. Why not? Because plastic is a combination of elements extracted from crude oil then re-mixed up by men in white coats. Because these combinations are man made they are unknown to nature. Consequently, it has been thought that there is no natural system to break them down. The enzymes and the micro organisms responsible for breaking down organic materials that occur naturally such as plants, dead animals, rocks and minerals, don't recognize them. This means that plastic products are said indestructible, in a biodegradable sense at least.

In sum, as time passes, we know that plastic will eventually photo-degrade, i.e. break down into smaller and smaller fragments by exposure to the sun. The photo-degradation process continues down to the molecular level, yet photo-degraded plastic remains a polymer. No matter how small the pieces, they are still and always will be plastic, i.e. they are not absorbed into or changed by natural processes. At sea, the plastic fragmentation process occurs as well, due to wave, sand action, and oxidation. Estimates for plastic degradation at sea has been ranged from 450 to 1,000 years.

Of particular concern are the floating small plastic fragments often referred in the media to as mermaids' tears, which are tiny nurdles of raw plastic resin that form the building material of every manufactured plastic product, or are granules of domestic waste that have fragmented over the years. Dr Richard Thompson of the University of Plymouth, UK has identified plastic particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while they cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. Not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it. He estimates that there are 100,000 particles of plastic per sq km of seabed and 300,000 items of plastic per sq km of sea surface.

Either way, mermaid tears, or fragmented plastic debris, reaching microscopic size over time, remain everywhere and are almost impossible to clean up. They are light enough to float in the wind, landing in the earth's oceans. Mermaid's tears are often found in filter feeders like mussels, barnacle, lugworm and amphipods.

Thus, the photo degradation of plastic debris makes the matter worse. Plastic becomes microscopic, invisible, yet ever polluting waters, beaches, coasts, seafloor, being eaten by even tinier marine organisms, therefore entering the food chain insidiously and ineluctably.

Toxic Sponge

Corroborating reports and findings worldwide demonstrated that fragmented plastics debris' increase and massive presence on and off shores does constitute reason for raised worries and awareness.

Studies on small plastic pellet by Dr Richard Thompson and by Hideshige Takada, Yukie Mato professor of organic geochemistry at Tokyo University, have shown that plastic debris meeting other pollutants in the oceans absorbs harmful chemicals from the sea water they float in, acting like a pollution sponges.

These studies have been conducted on plastic nurdles not just because of their uniform size and shape, thus easier to study and compare by scientifics, but also because of their wide spread presence on the world's beaches.

In UK, mermaid tears are the second common plastic litter found on the beaches according to the Marine Conservation Society's 2007 data and a Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) report.

According to Charles Moore, these resin pellets account for around 8 percent of annual oil production and are the raw material for the 260 million tons of plastic consumed yearly worldwide. Lightweight and small, they escape in untold volumes during transport and manufacture and wash in the ocean.

Even though these researches have been conducted on nurdles, it is crucial to keep in mind, as Dr. Takada team confirmed, that other types of plastic debris (from fishing gear, shopping bags, to small fragments) displays the exact same propensity as the nurdles of raw plastic resin to absorb toxins.

Nurdles covered beach. Photo Source: Algalita Foundation

Plastic resin pellets are round, shiny and tiny, mostly less than 5mm in diameter. The very structure of the plastic material is oily and greasy (basically plastics are solid oil) therefore promoting the accumulation of hydrophobic contaminants (ones that tend to repel and not absorb water) from the surrounding seawater. Chemicals like PCB's and DDE are very hydrophobic. It was shown that plastic pellets suck up these dangerous persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and toxins with a concentration factor that's almost 1 million times greater compared to the overall concentration of the chemicals in seawater. In other words, waterborne hydrophobic pollutants do collect and magnify on the surface of plastic debris, thus making plastic far more deadly in the ocean than it would be on land.

These findings, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, were based on samples gathered from 30 beaches in 17 countries. PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyls) pollutant concentrations on plastic pellet were highest on US coasts, followed by Western Europe and Japan. The highest concentrations of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), the most toxic of all pesticides, were found on the US west coast and Vietnam.

Plastic marine debris, thought to be "indestructible", "lasting forever", has been shown to decompose faster than previously thought, under unexpected conditions (in the water and at sea temperature) and, most importantly, releasing toxic substances not found in the natural element: seawater.

Decompose

Since plastics belong to a chemical family of high polymers, they are essentially made up of a long chain of molecules containing repeated units of carbon atoms. Because of this inherent molecular stability (high molecular weight), plastics do not easily breakdown into simpler components.

North America, touched landscape. Photo Source: photobucket

Plastics do decompose, though not fully, over a very long period of time (in average 100 to 500 years). Commercially available plastics (polyolefins like polyethylene, polypropylene, etc.) have been further made resistant to decomposition by means of additional stabilizers like antioxidants. Thus, unless the plastic is specially designed to decompose in the soil, such materials can last a very long time because the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together are often stronger than nature's power to take them apart. This means that soil microorganisms that can easily attack and decompose things like wood and other formerly living materials cannot break the various kinds of strong bonds that are common to most plastics. This depends upon the plastic (polymer) and the environment to which it is exposed.

The Marine Conservancy has published that the estimated decomposition rates of most plastic debris found on coasts are:

Foamed plastic cups: 50 years

Plastic beverage holder: 400 years

Disposable diapers: 450 year

Plastic bottle: 450

Fishing line: 600 years.

Until Dr. Saido's report, no studies had been conducted on plastic decomposition at low temperature in the marine environment, owing to the mistaken conception that plastic does practically not decompose in such condition. In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste drifting in the world's oceans, researchers, lead by Katsuhiko Saido, PhD, reported that plastic does "decompose with surprising speed (as little as a year) and release potentially toxic substances into the water."

These findings were reported on August 19, 2009, at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The scientists there termed the discovery "surprising."

Dr. Saido described a new method to simulate the breakdown of plastic products at low temperatures (30º Celsius, 86º F), such as those found in some oceans. David Barnes, marine ecologist from the British Antarctic Survey, expressed that the Japanese's team lab results cannot be applied uniformly across the ocean. However, even though the decomposition process would not occur in much cooler seawater as Barnes mentioned, the oceans are vast, currents are constant and permanent, nothing stays static and furthermore, it seems that garbage patches where plastics accumulate, are to be found in even greater dimension in the South Gyres, in the tropical and sub tropical zones with very warm waters. One of the researchers stated: "Even at 30 degrees Celsius, the plastic decomposes. In natural conditions, the tide comes in and sunlight heats the plastics [which increases decomposition]."

The type of plastic studied by Saido's team was polystyrene, a white foamed plastic, commonly known by the trademark Styrofoam.

The process involved modeling plastic decomposition at room temperature, removing heat from the plastic and then using a liquid to extract the BPA and PS Oligomer that are not found naturally, thus must have been created through the decomposition of the plastic. Once degraded, the plastic was shown to release three new compounds not found in nature: styrene monomer (SM), styrene dimer (SD) and styrene trimer (ST). While SM is already a known carcinogen, SD and ST are suspected to be as well.

Plastics are not metabolized subsequent to ingestion since they are polymers. On the other hand, low molecular compounds such as PS oligomer or BPA from plastic decomposition are toxic and can be metabolized!

Samples of sea sand and seawater collected from Europe, India, Japan and the Pacific Ocean were found to be contaminated, with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition.
"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable," said study lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D. "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future."

This latest study clearly shows new micro-pollution by compounds generated by plastic decomposition to be taking place out of sight in the ocean, leaching toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA) and derivatives of polystyrene.

Even though present in seawater and sands, the pollutants are found in highest concentration in areas heavily littered with plastic debris, such as ocean vortices, which bring us to define more specifically the notion of gyres and "garbage patches".

Gyres and Garbage Patches

The plastic litter defacing the beaches of the World, alarming in Hawaiian archipelagos for instance, led, only two decades ago, a couple of private and public teams of environmentalists and scientists to start conducting research regarding marine debris in the oceans.

Between 1985 and 1988, an Alaska- based team of researchers found high concentrations of marine debris accumulating in regions governed by vortices like pattern of ocean currents, which lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States to publish a paper, in 1988, mentioning the high probability of the existence of "a large area highly concentrating plastic waste debris in the North Pacific". Flyovers of the area have been conducted as well, but not in a conclusive way. The trash was not that obvious from the sky. Indeed, despite its size and density, the GGP is not visible from satellite photography because of its consistency, as Kaisei project and Scripps teams confirmed last August. The largest mass of the plastic pollution contains fragmented pieces of plastic, permeating the ocean, almost invisible to the naked eye, suspended at, or beneath the surface of the ocean.

Plastic soup. Photo: Charles Moore

As evoked above, Charles Moore, a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist, and researcher, was crossing the Pacific Ocean while returning from a trans Pacific sailing race in 1997. He veered from the usual sea route taking a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Ocean. He came upon an area, the Doldrums, a windless part of the ocean that mariners usually avoid. The area is filled with tiny phytoplankton, but few big fish or mammals, thus fishermen and sailors rarely travel through it. There, Charles Moore saw an ocean he had never known. Every time he stepped out on deck, "there were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic."

This area that Charles Moore came upon, the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, is a slowly moving, clockwise spiral or vortex of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. He reported his find to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, who named it the Eastern Garbage Patch.
Shocked by the extent of the plastic litter, Charles Moore went on alerting the world to the existence of this phenomenon.

Moore's discovery was finally corroborating previous scientists's, suspicions and extrapolations in regard to the existence of a high debris concentration in stable bodies of oceanic waters created over time by the rotating ring-like ocean currents system called gyres.

"We were out in the middle of the Pacific, where you would think the ocean would be pristine," recalls the Alguita's captain, Charles Moore. "...And instead, we get the Exxon Valdez of plastic-bag spills."

Captain Moore's giant floating debris field's discovery has since been subject to other expeditions, and another "patch" was found further west.

Media light was finally brought in force at that point. Human kind has walked on the moon since 1969...yet the ocean was still quite an unknown frontier in our collective conscience.

Gyres

The North Pacific gyre has given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating plastic debris, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP). It is a gyre of marine litter in the Central North Pacific Ocean stretching for hundreds of miles across the ocean 1,000 miles from California coast on the East, to Japan and Hawaii on the West.

More specifically, a gyre is a large-scale circular feature made up of ocean currents that spiral around a central point, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Gyres make up to 40 percent of the ocean. That is 25 percent of the globe. All of them are accumulators of debris, Moore says.

Worldwide, there are five major subtropical oceanic gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre. Since each behaves in the same vortex style, scientists are certain that massive conglomerates of marine litter like the North Pacific Garbage Patch exist in each of the world's oceans. That is soberingly self-explanatory: such huge garbage patch, or even larger ones, are more than likely to be discovered in the near future.

North Pacific Gyre. Illustration: NOAA

It is very difficult to measure the exact size of a gyre because it is a fluid system, but the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is roughly estimated to be approximately 7 to 9 million square miles, approximately three times the area of the continental United States (3 million square miles). Gyres do potentially aggregate debris on that large a scale. That is titanic.

Upon returning from their 22 days venture on the GGP, Project Kaisei and Scripps scientists' stated in a press conference held in September 2009: "(we) hope our data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine plastic debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger. "We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.

Garbage Patches

The Great Garbage patch is two separate accumulations connected by a 6,000-mile marine litter "corridor" known as the North Pacific Convergence Zone (STCZ). As will be explained infra, the convergence zone is in itself another serious accumulator of traveling plastic debris.

The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch floats between Japan and Hawaii; the Western Patch floats between Hawaii and California. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from as far as Asia to the USA. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris inward, trapping debris in higher concentrations in the calm center. Ocean currents carry debris from the East coast of Asia to the center, in less than a year, and from the Western US in about 5 years.

North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Illustration: Greenpeace

NOAA has tracked the Great Pacific Garbage Patch movements to some degree. It is not a stationary area, but one that moves and changes as much as a thousand miles north and south, and during warmer ocean periods, known as El Nino, it drifts even further south. The movements occur because the North Pacific Gyre is made up of four different currents: the North Pacific Current to the north; the California Current to the west; the North Equatorial Current to the south; and the Kuroshio Current to the east. This movement sometimes brings the Western Garbage Patch within 500 nautical miles of the California coast and causes extraordinary massive debris pile-ups on beaches, such as in the Hawaiian Islands and Japan.

Great Garbage patch, floating debris. Photo Source: flyaddicts

The name garbage patch has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items, such as bottles and other litter, akin to a literal blanket of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is simply not true. While larger litter items can be found in this area, along with other debris such as derelict fishing nets, the largest mass of the debris is small bits of floatable plastic.

We cannot emphasize enough that the GGP is now characterized by extremely high concentrations of suspended plastic debris for 90 percent, basically a soupy mix of plastic-filled seawater, made of tiny plastic debris that have been trapped by the currents and stretching for maybe thousands of miles, and that is the great problem.

Indeed, the researchers from Project Kaisei and the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), after their journey through the area, collecting samples the whole way, reported: "All we could see, not at first glance but with magnifying glass and magnifying worries, for miles and miles, was an incredibly huge mass of confetti-like tiny mermaid tears, plastic fragments, floating just beneath the surface. " As one of the scientist from the Project Kaisei witnessed: "There's no island, there's no eighth continent " Miriam Goldstein said, "It doesn't look like a garbage dump. It looks like beautiful ocean. But then when you put the nets in the water, you see all the little pieces." And while the expedition covered 1,700 miles, members of the Kaisei team say the patch could be much, much larger...

As for its depth and assumed density, the scientists reported that the GGP's waters were just clogged with plastic particles to a depth of 10 meters below the surface. The Scripps/ Kaisei survey mission of the gyre found that plastic debris was present in 100 consecutive samples taken at varying depths and net sizes.

In sum, they estimated the patch area ranged in size from 700,00 km2 to more than 15 million km2; the area may contain over 100 million tons of plastic debris.

Already in 1999, a study by Charles Moore, sampling waters from the GGP, found that the concentrations of plastic there reached one million particles per square mile, topping the concentration of zooplankton (plankton consisting of small animals and the immature stages of larger animals) by a factor of six. In 2008, the published new research from the Algalita foundation team of scientists estimated that the number had doubled.

After the return of the two vessels from Project Kasei and Scripps (Seaplex), Kaisei and New Horizon, the only certainty was that the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch remains uncertain. "It's not a hard and fast number." There has been extensive media coverage about the garbage patch over the past couple years; however, its reported size and mass have differed from news article to article. "It's a little bit like a whirlpool on the surface of a river or a lake. You'd be hard-pressed to tell me where the edge is. All you know is that it's stronger in the middle than it is in the outer reaches. But it's an area of many hundreds of miles, perhaps thousands, in which the ocean currents tend to bring it together," according to Robert Knox, deputy director for research at the Scripps Institution.

In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second expedition to the North Pacific Gyre where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research and, in particular, to test an array of larger marine debris collection systems.

Marine debris collection at the GGP. Photo: Lindsey Hoshaw

The Eastern Garbage Patch has been studied the most so far, yet it is not and obviously cannot be the only vast oceanic "rubbish dump out there" says Charles Moore. The GGP is definitely not the only type of area where marine debris concentrates. Several other features within the ocean, including oceanic eddies and convergence zones, can lead to debris accumulation as well. A great and well known example is the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ). It is located along the southern edge of an area known as the North Pacific Transition Zone. NOAA has focused on the STCZ because it is an area triggering massive debris accumulation in Hawaii. This area does not have distinct boundaries and varies in location and intensity of convergence throughout the year. This zone moves seasonally between 30º and 42º N latitude (approximately 800 miles), extending farther south (28ºN) during periods of El Niño (Donohue and Foley, 2007).

The August 2009 expedition was so dauntingly successful and the findings were so"shocking", that "...Scripps' officials are now working to raise funds for a trip to the South Pacific gyre, sometime within the next two years", Haymet announced at a press conference last August. "That project's scope is far greater. While the North Pacific patch appeared as large as the Continental US, its South Pacific cousin is suspected to be about four times as large", roughly the size of all of Western and part Eastern Europe.

II: The Path To Successful Resolution

This unprecedented plastic waste tide appears as vast as the ocean, as ungraspable as the unfathomable mass of microscopic plastic fragments present at sea, transported by winds and currents, yet, ultimately, the plastic tide can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral change on our part. The path to successful resolution of the crisis clearly appears...as we are the problem and the solution.

The Victims and The Aggressors

The despondent effects and too numerous casualties of the great plastic tide are visible, but more alarmingly, beyond visual, which ought to prompt the perpetrators to choose no other path than the advocacy and culture of consistent and sustained behavioral changes.

Creek in Manilla, Philippines, March 01 2009. Photo: Francis R. Malasig

The Victims

Animals

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life, i.e animals on shore and off shore, whether by ingestion or entanglement.

In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, millions of birds and fishes.

The largest pieces of marine plastic debris, miles long discarded fishing nets and lines mostly, take an obvious toll on animals. These derelicts nets, called ghost nets, snare and drown thousands of larger sea creatures per year, such as seals, sea lions, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, dugons, crocodiles, seabirds, crabs, and other creatures. Acting as designed, these nets restrict movement causing starvation, laceration, infection, and, in animals that need to return to the surface to breathe, suffocation.

Entangled seal by derelict net, Hawaii. Photo Source: NOAA

On shores, researchers have also watched in horror as hungry turtles wolf down jellyfish-like plastic bags and seabirds mistake old lighters and toothbrushes for fish, choking when they try to regurgitate the plastic trash for their starving chicks.

Turtle eats plastic. Photo Source: Greenhouse Carbon Neutral Fdn

In the waters, plastic bags specifically, can be mistaken as food and consumed by a wide range of marine species, especially those that consume jellyfish or squid, which look similar when floating in the water column.

Albatross and others birds are choosing plastic pieces because of their similarity to their own food as well. Captain Moore and his Alguita team did see, above the GGP, albatrosses and tropicbirds circling above the line of trash. With little else to choose, they were obviously eating plastic. The birds seemed to be picking and choosing "the reds and pinks and browns. Anything that looks like shrimp," Moore says. Earlier in the trip, the Alguita had visited the French Frigate Shoals, off Hawaii, home to endangered monk seals and seabird rookeries. In the birds' gullets researchers found red plastic particles. Greenpeace reported that a staggering 80 percent of seabird populations observed worldwide have ingested plastics. Research into the stomach contents of dead Fulmars from the Netherlands, between 1982 and 2001, found that 96 percent of the birds had plastic fragments in their stomachs with an average of 23 plastic pieces per bird (Van Franeker and Meijboom, 2003).

Midway atoll, bird corpse. Photo: © Chris Jordan

When plastic ingestion occurs, it blocks the digestive tract, gets lodged in animals windpipes cutting airflow causing suffocation, or fills the stomach, resulting in malnutrition, starvation and potentially death. Indeed, it is found that debris often accumulates in the animals' gut and give a false sense of fullness, causing the animal to stop eating and slowly starve to death.

Midway atoll, bird corpse. Photo: © Chris Jordan

In April 2002 a dead Minke whale washed up on the Normandy coast in France. An investigation found that its stomach contained 800 kg of plastic bags (GECC, Groupe d'Etude des Cétacés du Cotentin, 2002).

In February 2004, a Cuviers Beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris) was found washed ashore on the west coast of the Isle of Mull, Scotland. Cuviers beaked whales are rarely seen in coastal waters, as they are predominantly a deep-water species. The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust took various skin and blubber samples and removed the stomach for further study by the Scottish Agricultural College. On initial removal it was found that the entrance to the stomach was completely blocked with a cylinder of tightly packed shredded black plastic bin liner bags and fishing twine. It is believed that this made it difficult for the animal to forage and feed effectively.

50 to 80 percent of sea turtles found dead are known to have ingested plastic marine debris.

The smaller the pieces of plastic get, the more dangerous they are to marine organisms. Fragmented plastic, specifically nurdles and small size mermaid tears, are found in the stomach of smaller sea creatures as well: fish, birds, marine mammal, reptile, jelly fish, select plastic pellets as they resemble fish eggs.

Whether the chemicals contained in the plastics are then desorbed to digestive fluids and transferred to tissues in quantities significant enough to harm the animals is subject to ongoing, yet still incomplete, research. However, as more and more studies on the matter are undergone, unpleasant findings are definitly uncovered.

What is proven, as we've seen supra, is that plastic does soak up pollutants, acting as toxic-sponge for man-made toxins present in the ocean, thus accumulating pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than in ocean water (Moore et al, 2001). PCBs can lead to reproductive disorders, death, an increased risk of disease, and an alteration of hormone levels (Ryan et al., 1988;Lee et al, 2001). They have been linked to the masculinisation of female polar bears and spontaneous abortions and declines in seal populations. In 1988, Ryan et al obtained evidence that PCBs in the tissues of Great Shearwaters were derived from ingested plastic particles (from Derraik, 2002). Furthermore, DDT, a pesticide that was banned in the US in the 1960's and labeled by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987 as a "probable human carcinogen," has been found on these plastics fragments. The most recent review of all evidence concludes that exposure to DDT before puberty increases the risk of breast cancer.

Food Chain

In a September press conference, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei, said that assessments of the impact of plastic debris on phytoplankton, zooplankton, and mesopelagic (midwater) fishes are undergoing. The samples collected from the seawater will be subject to more scientific studies for the toxicity of the plastics and how this is really affecting our food chain (in ways that are only just becoming known... and not good ways).

Plastic found in Rainbow Runner fish guts. Photo Source: Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D said, "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes (...) giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future." Furthermore, as Saido added: "We are concerned that plastic pollution is also caused by these invisible materials and that it will harm marine life." While the potential toxicity of these tiny plastic constituents is still understudied for much of marine life, plastics are abundant in many forms. Plastics, including polystyrene, are common in the wads of accumulated, undigested matter that young black-footed albatrosses cough up before they fledge.

Whether plastics present a unanimously accepted and proven toxic challenge to marine life, and subsequently to humans, is one of the biggest challenges facing scientists right now.

Health

Saido's latest science report last summer about the decomposition of polystyrene plastics vests a simple reality: Bisphenol A (BPA) has been shown and proven to interfere with the reproductive systems of animals. PS oligomer and BPA from plastic decomposition are toxic and can be metabolized, while styrene monomer is a suspected carcinogen. Low levels of BPA and PS oligomer have been proven to cause hormone disruption in animals.

More scientific reports are being published on the effects of Bisphenol A on animal and human health, and the news is not good.

In 2009, a professional, international medical organization in the field of endocrinology and metabolism, The Endocrine Society, reported data from new research on animals experimentally treated with BPA. Studies presented at the group's annual meeting show BPA can affect the hearts of women, can permanently damage the DNA of mice, and appear to be entering the human body from a variety of unknown sources. A 2005 study, which analyzed BPA serum concentrations, concluded that "exposure to BPA is associated with recurrent miscarriage".

The first major study of health effects on humans associated with bisphenol A exposure was published in September 2008 by Iain Lang and colleagues in the Journal of American Association. The cross-sectional study of almost 1,500 people assessed exposure to bisphenol A by looking at levels of the chemical in urine. The authors found that higher bisphenol A levels were significantly associated with heart diseases, diabetes, and abnormally high levels of certain liver enzymes.

A 2008 scientific review concluded that "prenatal exposure to (...) low doses of BPA alters breast development and increases breast cancer risk". A 2009 scientific review, funded by the "Breast Cancer Fund", has recommended "a federal ban on the manufacture, distribution and sale of consumer products containing bisphenol A".

A 2009 study on urinary concentrations concluded that prenatal BPA exposure might be associated with externalizing behaviors in two-year old children, especially among female children.

A 2009 study on Chinese workers in BPA factories found that workers were four times more likely to report erectile dysfunction, reduced sexual desire, and overall dissatisfaction with their sex life than workers in factories that made products ranging from textiles to machinery, in which there was no heightened BPA exposure. They were also more likely to report reduced sexual function within one year of beginning employment at the factory, and the higher the exposure, the more likely they were to have sexual difficulties.

A 2009 review of available studies has concluded, "Prenatal BPA exposure acts to exert persistent effects on body weight and adiposity."

A 2009 scientific review about environmental chemicals and thyroid function concluded, "Available evidence suggests that governing agencies need to regulate the use of thyroid-disrupting chemicals, particularly as such uses relate exposures of pregnant women, neonates and small children to the agents". A 2009 review summarized BPA adverse effects on thyroid hormone action.

Kuta beach, Bali. Photo Source: Claude Graves

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. Much of ocean's life is in the microscopic size range and zooplankton is the base of the food chain. As environmentalists remind the world's population, "...We are eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste..." (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress)."

Beaches, Coast, Sea Floor, Shorelines

Blatantly visible is the plastic spill washing up on the shores and beaches. Just a walk on any beach, anywhere in the world, and plastic debris are found in one form or another. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, just staggeringly. Last year, an estimated 150,000 tons of marine plastic debris washed up onto the shores of Japan and 300 tons a day on India's shores.

Layson Island, Hawaiian islands. Photo Source: NOAA

The Hawaiian Archipelago, extending from the southernmost island of Hawaii 1,500 miles northwest to Kure Atoll, is among the longest and most remote island chains in the world. The 19 islands of the archipelago, including Midway atolls, receive massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the Pacific gyres. Some of the plastic litter is decades old. Some beaches are buried under 5 to 10 feet of plastic trash, while other beaches are riddled with "plastic sand," millions of grain-like pieces of plastic that are practically impossible to clean up. One of the reasons marine debris accumulates in these islands is the movement of debris within the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ), as we have explained supra.

Two studies on several islands off Jakarta Bay and islands further to the northwest in the Java Sea, reported that debris pollution on shorelines had substantially increased between 1985 and 1995 (Uneputty and Evans 1997b, Willoughby et al. 1997). Both studies noted that results implicated Jakarta as a major source of the debris. On 23 of the islands, it was reported that the total litter at the strandline ranged from not detectable to 29.1 items/m (Willoughby et al. 1997). Plastic bags, polystyrene blocks, and discarded footwear accounted for 80 percent of the items found.

Researchers Barnes and Milner (2005) list five studies which have shown increases in accumulation rates of debris on mid to high latitude coasts of the southern hemisphere.

Surveys of shorelines around the world, reported by Greenpeace, have recorded the quantity of marine debris either as the number of items per km of shoreline or the number of items per square meter of shoreline. The highest values reported were for Indonesia (up to 29.1 items per m) and Sicily (up to 231 items per m).

Seabed Pollution. Photo Source: Bouteilles à la mer org.

It's been reported by Greenpeace that an estimated 70 percent of the mass of fragmented plastic present in the open oceans of the world does sink to the deep-sea bed. A limited body of literature exists, though, concerning these small to microscopic particles (micro debris) mirroring the little research addressed to marine litter on the sea floor.

Ecosystem Changes

Another effect of the plastic tide that goes beyond visual is its potentiality to change entire ecosystems.

"Plastic is not just an aesthetic problem," says marine biologist David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey. "It can actually change entire ecosystems." He has documented that plastic debris which floats on the oceans, acts as rafts for small sea creatures to grow and travel on. This represents a potential threat for the marine environment should an alien species become established. It is postulated that the slow speed at which plastic debris crosses oceans makes it an ideal vehicle for this. The organisms have plenty of time to adapt to different water and climatic conditions.

Coral Reefs

Derelict fishing gear can be destructive to coral reefs. Corals are in fact animals, even though they may exhibit some of the characteristics of plants and are often mistaken for rocks. In scientific classification, corals fall under the phylum Cnidaria and the class Anthozoa. They are relatives of jellyfish and anemones. (NOAA)

Nets and lines become snagged on coral and subsequent wave action causes coral heads to break off at points where the debris was attached. Once freed, debris can again snag on more coral and the whole process is repeated. This cycle continues until the debris is removed or becomes weighted down with enough broken coral to sink (NOAA 2005a). Eventually, derelict fishing gear may become incorporated into the reef structure.

Plastic on Coral. Photo Source: EPA

Plastic bags can kill coral by covering and suffocating them, or by blocking sunlight needed by the coral to survive. During 2001, so many plastic bags were regularly seen in the Gulf of Aqaba, off the coast of Jordan, that the Board of Aqaba Special Economic Zone issued a law banning the production, distribution, and trade of plastic bags within the areas under their jurisdiction.

Economics

Marine litter cause serious economic losses to various sectors and authorities. Among the most seriously affected are coastal communities (increased expenditures for beach cleaning, public health and waste disposal), tourism (loss of income, bad publicity), shipping (costs associated with fouled propellers, damaged engines, litter removal and waste management in harbors), fishing (reduced and lost catch, damaged nets and other fishing gear, fouled propellers, contamination), fish farming and coastal agriculture.

Haina, Dominican Republic. Photo Source: Eduardo Munoz

In a 2007 Fortune Magazine article about India, it was written that the costs of river pollution to the economy are enormous. Waterborne diseases are India's leading cause of childhood mortality. Shreekant Gupta, a professor at the Delhi School of Economics who specializes in the environment, estimates that lost productivity from death and disease resulting from river pollution and other environmental damage is equivalent to about 4 percent of gross domestic product.

The bill for cleaning the beaches in Bohuslän, on the west coast of Sweden, in just one year was reportedly at least 10 million SEK or $1,550,200. In Britain, Shetland fishermen reported that 92 per cent of them had recurring problems with debris in nets, with each boat losing between $10,500 and $53,300 per year as a result of marine litter. The cost to the local industry could be as high as $4,300,000. The municipality of Ventanillas in Peru has calculated that it would have to invest around $400,000 a year in order to clean its coastline, while its annual budget for cleaning all public areas is only half that amount. (Unep)

Our Oceans and coastlines are under unprecedented plastics waste attack. It's coming back at us in many ways. It's a dire problem that only received serious scientific and public attention in the early 90's, as we know, but all along the perpetrators have simply and clearly been identified.

The Aggressors

The obvious and simple answer is: us...

Behind each and every piece of littered plastic debris there is a human face. At a critical decision point, someone, somewhere, mishandled it, either thoughtlessly or deliberately. Cigarette filters and cigar tips, fishing line, rope and gear, baby diapers and nappies, six-pack rings, beverage bottles and cans, disposable syringes, tires, the litany of plastic litter is as varied as the products available in the global marketplace, but it all shares a common origin.

Sources

260 million tons per year is our estimated plastic consumption, 6 789 billion, is the estimated world population (United States Census Bureau, as of October 2009). Our voracious appetite for plastics, coupled with a culture of discarding products that we have chosen for their inherent longevity, is a combination of lethal nature for our environment.

Plastic Sea. Photo Source: Coastal wiki

The ultimate symbol of our throwaway lifestyle is the plastic bag: 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags is the number consumed annually, which is about a million a minute. The production of plastic bags creates enough solid waste per year to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. The petroleum used to make only 14 plastic bags could drive a car 1 mile.

Plastic bags are commonly found in waterways, on beaches, and in other unofficial dumping sites across China, for instance. Litter caused by the notorious bags has been referred to as "white pollution."

In the United States, however, measures to ban or curtail the use of plastic bags have met with official resistance. With its powerful lobby, the plastics industry argues that jobs will disappear. The industry employs some two million workers. Americans alone throw out at least 100 billion bags a year, the equivalent of throwing away 12 million gallons of oil, which seems an intolerable waste. Until the U.S. follows the lead of San Francisco, China, Ireland, Uganda, South Africa, Russia, and Hong Kong and targets the reduction of plastic bags using legislature, we each need to make a conscious choice and refuse to use it.

The core of the plastic waste instillation in world's oceans is primarily rooted in poor practices of solid waste management, a lack of infrastructure, various human activities, an inadequate understanding on the part of the public of the potential consequences of their actions, the lack of adequate legal and enforcement systems nationally and internationally, and a lack of financial resources affected to the cause. Mainly a consensus needs to happen, as a culture of behavioral changes needs to be promoted.

The four main land-sources of plastics debris have been identified as:

Shoreline and recreational activities related litter

This includes: bags, balloons, beverages bottles, cans, caps, lids, shoes, cups, plates, forks, knives, spoons, food wrappers/containers, six-pack holders, pull tabs, shotgun shells/wadding, straws, stirrers, toys, medical hygiene (condom, syringe), drug and smoking paraphernalia (The filters are made of cellulose acetate, a synthetic polymer (fiber) that can last for many years in the environment), and 55 gallons drums. All this land-based debris blows, washes, or is discharged into the water from land areas after people engaged in beach-going activities have discarded it.

Branscombe, United Kingdom, Photo: Matt Cardy

About 80 percent of all tourist flock to coastal areas. Massive influxes of tourists, often to a relatively small area, have a huge impact, adding to the pollution of the local population, putting local infrastructure and habitats under enormous pressure. For example, 85 percent of the 1.8 million people who visit Australia's Great Barrier Reef are concentrated in two small areas, Cairns and the Whitsunday Islands, which together have a human population of just 130,000 or so, WWF reported.

Shoreline activities account for 58 percent of the marine litter in the Baltic Sea region and almost half in Japan and the Republic of Korea. In Jordan, recreational activities contribute up to 67 percent of the total discharge of marine litter. This is a particularly big problem in the East Asian Seas region - home to 1.8 billion people, 60 percent of whom live in coastal areas - with its fast growing shipping and industrial development. Other emerging hotspots include the oil-boom coasts of the Caspian and the littoral states of Iran and Azerbaijan.

In South Asia, the growing ship-breaking industry has become a major source of marine debris. In Gujarat, India - one of the largest and busiest ship-breaking yards in the world - operations are carried out on a 10-kilometer stretch on the beaches of Alang, generating peeled-off paint chips and other types of non-degradable solid waste making its way into the sea.

Sewage (waste waters containing plastic type products, rivers, waterways)

Under normal, dry weather conditions, most wastes are screened out of sewage in countries that do apply strict sewage treatment. However, materials can bypass treatment systems and enter waterways when rain levels exceed sewage treatment facilities' handling capacity. During these times, sewage overflows occur.

The Yamuna River, which flows 855 miles from the Himalayas into the Ganges, is one of India's most, but not only, polluted river. The Centre for Science and Environment says that nearly 80 percent of the river's pollution is the result of sewage. Combined with industrial runoff, that comes to more than three billion liters of waste per day, a quantity well beyond the river's assimilative capacity. Many Indian rivers are so polluted they exceed permissible levels for safe bathing.

Yamuna River in New Delhi. Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

It has been reported that the lack of adequate solid waste management facilities results in hazardous wastes entering the waters of the Western Indian Ocean, South Asian Seas, and southern Black Sea, among others.

Fishing related debris

Dumping, wastes from ships, boats platforms (20%). Derraik (2002) stated that ships are estimated to dump 6.5 million tons of plastic a year. An estimated fourth fifths of the oceanic debris is litter blown seaward from landfills and urban runoff washed down storm drains. (Unep). Clean up on land where 80 percent of the plastic debris originates is thus the primarily obvious answer.

Manual Clean Up

The simplest, yet highly effective, action is the manual clean up of the beaches, coasts, rivers, lands and estuaries.

National and international manual clean-up operations of shorelines and sea floor are in existence.

For instance, the past 20 years, the Japan Environmental Action Network (JEAN) has been organizing a yearly beach cleanup and survey.

On an international level, the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) was installed. The International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) engages the public to remove trash and debris from the world's beaches and waterways, to identify the sources of debris, and to change the behaviors that cause pollution. The origins of the ICC began in 1985 with research conducted by The Ocean Conservancy (then known as the Center for Marine Conservation - CMC) on plastics in the marine environment. Contracted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Toxic Substances, the CMC produced the report Plastics in the Ocean: More Than a Litter Problem, which was the first study to identify plastics as a significant marine debris hazard. The data collected and analyzed from the annual ICC Cleanup is used locally, nationally and internationally to influence policy decisions, spawn campaigns for recycling programs, support public education programs, launch adopt-a-beach programs, and even storm water system overhaul and legislative reform.

The Clean Up the World program is run in conjunction with UNEP. It engages more than 40 million people from 120 different countries in clean up operations.

Hawaiin shores. Photo Source: epa.gov

As part of its Rise Above Plastics campaign, Surfrider foundation is hosting frequent beach clean-ups; it is an example of an encouraging trend towards collective awareness and action to solve the problem at its source.

Worldwide private groups and associations are more and more aware that clean-up does need to happen, one day at a time, one person at a time.

Cleaning Up Of The Oceans Debris In The Open Seas

NOAA has also been contacted regarding cleanup of the debris directly in the garbage patch and other areas of the North Pacific; however, cleanup is likely to be more difficult than it may seem. "If only things were that simple. We could just go out there and scoop up an island," says Holly Bamford, director of NOAA's marine debris program. "If it was one big mass, it would make our jobs a whole lot easier." It's like a galaxy of garbage, populated by billions of smaller trash islands that may be hidden underwater or spread out over many miles.

Furthermore, in some areas where marine debris concentrates so does marine life, such as in the STCZ. This makes simple scooping up of the material risky, more harm than good may be caused. Straining ocean waters for plastics would capture the plankton that is the base of the marine food web and responsible for 50 percent of the photosynthesis on Earth. (NOAA).

As Captain Charles Moore once said: the cleaning up effort of the oceanic garbage patches "would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went."

However, confident in the future and investigating new horizons, Doug Woodring, from Project Kaisei, will be producing a documentary for National Geographic testing catch techniques for the plastic waste ("we know not all can be caught, but some can for sure"), at least for the largest debris that we know do decompose over time and actually more rapidly than previously thought.

Marine debris accumulation, on seafloor. Photo Source: NOAA

The clean up operation is the most immediate, highly effective, and simplest, action/plan that we, the problem, can undertake right now to contribute to the solution. It is a great starting point for a fundamental cultural change that need to occur, which is part of a major consensus.

The Consensus

Undeniably a culture of behavioural changes, now in its infancy, need to further blossom and be implemented/prompted at all levels: individual, associative, governmental, legislative, industrial, technological, educational, philosophical, national, and international.

It simply starts with individual choices. That is the enormous task, yet the enormous power as well because it resides within each and every one of us. Indeed, thanks to an increased awareness of the plastic pollution spread, local, national, individual, and associative actions have taken place worldwide to stop the plastic hemorrhage at the source.

Education, Legislation, and Awareness

Education

The starting point of all greater good does remain education and information.

More and more awareness and preventive programs are promoted.

For instance, in 2004, the Australian government launched a campaign called Keep the Sea Plastic Free, in which it attempted to educate the public to dispose of plastic waste properly.

Surfrider foundation is aiming to raise awareness of plastic marine debris and reduce the proliferation of single-use plastic bags and water bottles, as well as the number one littered item worldwide, cigarette butts. The Rise Above Plastics program also seeks to promote a more sustainable lifestyle and educate people about the prevalence of plastic marine debris on our beaches and oceans and how deadly it can be to marine life.

South East Asia - Philippines, 2008. Photo: Tamara Thoreson Pierce

The Indonesian government, for instance "(is) seriously concerned about improving its waste management and informing the public," quoted the Jakarta Post, 2008. The head of the Maritime and Coastal Resources Studies, Tridoyo Kusumastanto, said that both individual and industrial dumpers should learn from scavengers who take solid waste out instead of dumping it into rivers, canals and the sea. Tridoyo estimated that some 40 tons of waste have been dumped into rivers and other waterways daily in surrounding areas and thus polluting the Java Sea. A campaign against river and sea pollution has been called, and people are urged to change their culture of throwing garbage into waterways and other common places.

Being educated on the situation and aware of the consequences ultimately leads us toward better choices in term of consumption and waste management of plastic at an individual level. It can be as simple as refraining from discarding plastic after first use...plastic inherently chosen for its durability.

Mumbai Impressions... when the water retreats... Plastic Pollution. Captions and Photo source: ©© Don Domingo

As H. Takada mentioned: "We can't avoid using plastic, but we use too much. "In fact, he's added a fourth "R" to the ecologist's classic mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle: refuse. The current bring-your-own-bag movement at retail stores and supermarkets is a good start in terms of refusing, he notes.

Instantaneous, prompt eradication of plastics in its current form, rate of production, and consumption is not realistically feasible, yet constant pressure is impacting industry and politicians to "think green," to have environmentally responsible approach, production, prevention plans, and legislations.

Extend Producer Responsibility

Relentless associative campaigns have proven that change can happen, such as the recent victory from the Uk's Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) campaign against mermaid tears.

"SAS launched a campaign to rid British coastlines of mermaid tears, and will continue to build up until factory practice changes." On June 5th 2009, the release of the British Plastic Federation's (BPF) Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) guidance manual was a victory on the preventive field. OCS is aimed at improving British plastic factories efficient use of plastic pellets, commonly referred to as mermaid's tears. SAS initially highlighted the problem of mermaid's tears on UK beaches to the BPF in 2007, delivering a bottle of 10,000 mermaid's tears, collected from one Cornish beach, to a BPF biopolymer seminar. SAS also released a covert film documenting mermaid's tears in the storm drains of plastic factories in the southwest, highlighting the route from factory to beach. SAS and the BPF have worked together on the OCS solution. SAS has already signed up Contico, one of the southwest's largest plastic factories, to pilot some of the improvements within OCS.

Shoichiro Kobayashi, from The Japan Plastics Industry Federation, says that its members have taken measures to reduce spillage of plastics nurdles.

"Awareness of the problem is high," says Kobayashi, and has been since JEAN and other NPOs started publicizing the issue about 15 years ago. The federation has about 1,000 members. Together with the 2,200-member All Japan Plastic Products Industrial Foundation, the two groups represent the largest plastic producing companies in Japan. Kobayashi says his organization encourages members and associated transport companies to avoid spillage and to cover all drainage pipe openings with wire mesh. That's helped reduce the problem at larger companies, but there are more than 20,000 producers of plastic goods in Japan.

On September 22nd 2009 in California, a press conference was held by DTC director Maziar Movassaghi and Project Kaisei founder Mary Crowley, along with representatives from the State of California and various nonprofit groups. They pushed for Extended Producer Responsibility, the philosophy that companies that create products must take responsibility for the full life cycle of those products, products that are "benign by design." Mary Crowley added, "Let's reduce the source of this pollution by not only choosing healthy, plastic-free products ourselves, but also urging our legislators to pass Extended Producer Responsibility legislation. In fact, such a bill is currently on the table in the state of California. AB283, the California Product Stewardship Act, is an important step in this process."

Changzhi, Shanxi Province. Photo: Stringer Shanghai

Local legislations, with clear frames and enforcements measures, are increasingly being presented and passed in concert with international programs and legislations, which need ratification by as many countries as possible as the pollution is without frontiers.

Legislation And International Concerted Programs

Internationally

In 1972, the London Convention, a United Nations agreement to control ocean dumping, was entered into. It was followed by the most well known piece of International legislation, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from ships (MARPOL). Annex V of MARPOL was introduced in 1988 with the intention of banning the dumping of most garbage and all plastic materials from ships at sea. A total of 122 countries have ratified the treaty. There is some evidence that the implementation of MARPOL has helped to reduce the marine debris problem.

UK Beach. Photo Source: SWNS

In 1972 and 1974, conventions were held in Oslo and Paris, respectively, which resulted in the passing of the OSPAR Convention, an international treaty controlling marine pollution in the north-east Atlantic Ocean around Europe. A similar Barcelona Convention exists to protect the Mediterranean Sea. The Water Framework Directive of 2000 is a European Union directive committing EU member states to make their inland and coastal waters free from human influence. In the United Kingdom, the proposed Marine Bill is designed to "ensure clean healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, by putting in place better systems for delivering sustainable development of marine and coastal environment".

Under the umbrella of UNEP, numerous cooperative efforts have been held to reach protocols and conventions. For instance, a Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management was approved in January 2008, involving 21 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the European Union. Within the framework of Land Based Sources Protocol for pollution reduction from land-based sources, Mediterranean countries and parties to the Barcelona Convention have agreed this year on an initial set of actions covering the reduction of municipal pollution and the elimination of a number of Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) continues to encourage member states in meeting the Caribbean Challenge target of protecting 20 percent of marine and coastal habitats by 2020. The Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem Project and development of a Regional Fund for Wastewater Management will support regional collaboration to reduce the vulnerability of sensitive coastal and marine ecosystems by improving national and regional governance structures and developing new and innovative mechanisms for financing new pollution reduction activities.

Even though the greatest problem with international legislation is its actual enforcement, the efforts toward concerted actions can only be promoted.

Nationally

A strict Chinese limit on ultra-thin plastic bags significantly reduced bag-related pollution nationwide during the past year. "Our country consumes a huge amount of plastic shopping bags each year" a spokesperson for China's State Council said, when announcing the ban last May. "While plastic shopping bags provide convenience to consumers, this has caused a serious waste of energy and resources and environmental pollution because of excessive usage, inadequate recycling and other reasons." In January 2008, The State Council, China's parliament, passed legislation to prohibit shops and supermarkets from providing free plastic bags that are less than 0.025 millimeters thick. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce also threatened to fine shopkeepers and vendors as much as 10,000 Yuan ($1,465) if they were caught distributing free bags. The country avoided the use of 40 billion bags, according to government estimates. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) estimated that the limit in bag production saved China 1.6 million tons of petroleum.

The first country to ban plastic bags was Bangladesh, which did so in 2002. Following a particularly damaging typhoon, authorities discovered that millions of bags were clogging the country's system of flood drains, contributing to the destruction.

In the same year, Ireland took another approach and instituted a steep tax on plastics. According to the country's Ministry of Environment, use fell by 90 percent as a result and the tax money that was generated funded a greatly expanded recycling program throughout the country. In 2003, the government of Taiwan put in place a system by which bags were no longer made available in markets without charge. Carryout restaurants were even required to charge for plastic utensils.

Larger economies have joined the cause and passed legislations on a national level. In 2005, French legislators imposed a ban on all non-biodegradable plastic bags, which will go into effect in 2010. Italy will also ban them that year.

During its 2008 session, the New York State Legislature passed legislation requiring the reduction, reuse, and recycling of checkout bags. The previous year, the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags altogether, at least the flimsy ones of yore. National Public Radio reported a few months later that the ban had been a boom for local plastics manufacturers, who have been introducing heavy-duty, recyclable, and even compostable bags into the marketplace.

An impactful vehicle for information and awareness is indubitably found in the media and creative ventures.

A good example of such ventures is the team of two South African surfers, Ryan and Bryson Robertson, and one Canadian, Hugh Patterson, who created the OceanGybe mission. Their plan is to circumnavigate the globe in a small 40ft sailboat and surf remote reef breaks on far flung islands while interacting with the local cultures. They intend to spread awareness of the vast tracts of plastic and trash afloat on the world's oceans that inevitably ends up on some unsuspecting shore.

Fishing debris on beach. Photo Source: unknown

More publicized and funded is the environmentalist and Adventure Ecology founder David de Rothschild's expedition: the Plastiki mission.

The Plastiki, a one-of-a-kind 60-foot catamaran, was created out of 10,000 reclaimed plastic soda bottles, self-reinforced PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and recycled materials. The vessel's name is a nod to famed explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who led a 1947 voyage on the Kon-Tiki to test theories of Polynesian settlement by South Americans. The Plastiki is about to make its momentous voyage across the Pacific Ocean, a 10,000-mile expedition from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia by the end of this year, to inspire people to rethink current uses and waste of plastic as a resource and bring attention to the GGP.

De Rothschild explained that Plastiki's construction has already jump-started research into a future "smart plastics" industry before ever leaving port. For instance, studies are underway on glues that could someday replace common marine epoxies and plastics that could replace non-recyclable fiberglass.
"The Plastiki voyage will be a great adventure, but I think more exciting is the ability to create a conversation on the issue of plastics."

Philosophy

Adventures of philosophical nature have been taking place as well.

Indeed, French thinkers such as Michel Serre or Luc Ferry, The new ecological order, have developed a train of thought aiming towards a legal recognition, therefore legal protection of Nature. This type of philosophy has been called, deep ecology. The principle is quite simple: democracies have installed their legislative framework, their "social contract," omitting Nature as a protagonist/subject of law. Therefore, to protect Nature, i.e. our environment, should we confer legal right to it, thus making nature a legal subject/person?

Obviously, all subject of law have rights, but they also have obligations. If we can easily forsee what the right and protection would be for this legal subject, what would be its obligations?

This leads many thinkers towards a notion of "droit ou devoir d'ingerence ecologique" (right or duty of intervention/assistance), trying to mirror the situation on the humanitarian field. The notions of "self defense" and "non assistance a personne en danger" have also been explored as possible legal frames to better enforcement of laws and conventions aimed to protect the environment, and curb ocean plastic pollution for that matter.

Sustainable And Future Technologies - Opportunities and Innovations

Biodegradable plastics

Biodegradable plastics have been considered as a future, sustainable option to curb our voracious demand and consumption of plastic material as known in its current form. According to the Biodegradable Plastics Society (2005), when such plastics are composted they break down to carbon dioxide and water.

Controversy does exist though, because it is possible that biodegradable plastics do not break down fully, especially under environmental conditions which are not ideal for composting, and leave non-degradable constituents, some of which may be equally, if not more, hazardous. Also, there is a danger that biodegradable plastics will be seen as "litter friendly" materials, conveying the wrong message to the public and potentially leading to less responsible and more wasteful practices.

A change in behavioral propensities to over-consume plastics, discard and thus pollute, need to be promoted to the fullest.

Ongoing discoveries and solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem

Scientists have been searching for solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem.

In 2008 and 2009, two high school students who discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms, might have found groundbreaking solutions.

African coast, plastic pollution and marine debris. Photo: Candace Feit

The first was Daniel Burd (2008). The second was Tseng I-Ching(l May 2009), a high school student in Taiwan.

Daniel's simple and clever process was to immerse ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, then isolating the most productive organisms. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures, Burd was achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment. It appeared as an environmentalist's dream: a non-chemical, i.e. fully organic, low cost and nontoxic method for degrading plastic.

There have been several successful bacteria based solutions developed at the Dept. of Biotechnology in Tottori, Japan, as well as at the Dept. of Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, but both apply only to styrene compounds.

Similarly, a 2004 study at the University of Wisconsin isolated a fungus capable of biodegrading phenol-formaldehyde polymers previously thought to be non-biodegradable.

Green chemistry and "begnign by design" concept

A growing interest amongst chemists, and ultimately industries, is Green chemistry- policy, also called "benign by design".

According to scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), a new type of environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may be developed. Robson F. Storey, Ph.D., a professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at USM, said, "We're moving toward making plastics more sustainable, especially those that are used at sea." Their study is funded by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which is supporting a number of ongoing research projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of marine waste. The new plastics are made of polyurethane that has been modified by the incorporation of PLGA [poly (lactide-co-glycolide)], a known degradable polymer used in surgical sutures and controlled drug-delivery applications. When exposed to seawater, the plastics degrade via hydrolysis into nontoxic products, according to the scientists. The plastics are not quite ready for commercialization. "More studies are needed to optimize the plastics for various environmental conditions they might encounter, including changes in temperature, humidity and seawater composition", Storey says.

A new kind of material, called oxo-biodegradable plastic, does not just fragment, but is consumed by microorganisms after the additive has reduced the molecular weight. It is thus biodegradable. This process continues until the material has biodegraded to nothing more than CO2, water, humus, and trace elements. There is little or no additional cost, as it can be made with the same machinery and workforce as conventional plastic. The time taken to degrade can be programmed to a few months or a few years and, until the plastic degrades, it has the same strength and other characteristics as conventional plastic. Oxo-biodegradable plastic will be engineered to degrade in a short time leaving no harmful residues.

Recycling and Zero Waste concept

A promising way toward a future of better plastic waste management is recycling the material. The recycling industry might eventually be a path leading to considerable opportunities and solutions.

The BIR (Bureau of International Recycling), whose headquarters is in Belgium, is a trade federation representing the world's recycling industry. About 800 companies and national federations from over 70 countries are affiliated with the BIR. Together they provide their expertise to other industrial sectors and political groups in order to promote recycling. It is estimated that the recycling industry employs more than 1.5 million people, annually processes over 500 million tons of commodities, and has a turnover exceeding $160 billion.

However, this industry is faced with many challenges, as the recycling material itself is very diverse in a chemical sense and can release, when processed, extremely dangerous chemicals. For instance, a recycling factory in China was recently exposed to tragic consequences due to the recycling of very hazardous plastic materials. It was reported that a team of workers in China's Zhejiang province collapsed after handling two metric tons of plastic scrap on September 13, 2009. At least 21 have since been hospitalized and three of them have died. According to the initial investigative conclusions, the victims were in contact with highly toxic chemical, dinitrophenol, which was found on the two tons of plastic scrap. Workers at the recycling factory were unaware of the hazard of the material and had no protection during the unloading. This particular tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. China's plastics recycling industry is poorly regulated, with scandals such as biohazard plastic waste being melted and reprocessed into consumer goods.

Recycling is definitely a potentially great path to solving the plastic waste problem but definitely not the most unchallenging one.

Along the same lines, a responsible waste strategy, namely the concept of Zero Waste, has been widespread. Such a strategy encompasses waste reduction, reuse and recycling as well as producer responsibility and ecodesign. According to a Greenpeace report, strategies to achieve Zero Waste are adopted throughout the world, in industrialized countries and in less developed countries.

Ultimately, this would mean reduction of the use of plastics. "Our understanding of disposal and reuse (of plastic, is what) is to blame." as many environmentalist such as de Rothschild, said.

This zero waste philosophy encourages the redesign of resource's life cycles, so that all products are reused. Any trash sent to landfills is minimal. The process recommended is one similar to the way that resources are reused in nature. Zero waste can represent an economical alternative to waste systems, where new resources are continually required to replenish wasted raw materials.

DTSC's Environmental Chemistry Laboratory is currently analyzing some of the plastic marine debris collected at the Great Garbage Patch by Project Kaisei scientists, and explores the potential of converting the plastic collected into new material.

Indeed, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei stated last September that they intend to use some of the newest plastic technologies to detoxify and turn the plastic waste caught in the oceans either into fuel or another useable material. Thus, Project Kaisei hopes to assign value to that plastic collected, particularly the overwhelming majority that is never recycled. It becomes obvious that technologies that convert plastic to fuel, clothing, or simply more profitable plastic could give people a good reason to pick up all that plastic and make a profit from it. Numerous industries, such as fashion, are already increasingly focusing on new green materials as a base for their offered products, encouraging a way of life and cultural change toward better choices and awareness of the environment.

"It's controllable," DougWoodring said. "We have to let people know that enough is enough, but it's not just a negative story about toxicity and wrecking our oceans. There is a huge amount of opportunity for innovation."

Conclusion

"The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed."
-Commandant Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

The abysmal depth and extent of the task before us ought to be never as inexhaustible and boundless as our dedication and compelling strive to greater changes.

Plastic pollution. Photograph: © SAF - Coastal Care
Note: This article was first written and published in November 2009, and last updated in September 2019.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Claire Le Guern Last updated in November 2019. The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Debris and Pollution Don't Belong in the Ocean

Marine litter is human-created waste that has been discharged into the coastal or marine environment. Specifically: "Marine debris" is defined to include any anthropogenic, manufactured, or processed solid material (regardless of size) discarded, disposed of, or abandoned in the environment, including all materials discarded into the sea, on the shore, or brought indirectly to the sea by rivers, sewage, storm water, waves, or winds."

We stand with scientists and policy makers who have found that effective solutions require actions to improve litter prevention, recycling, and other waste management infrastructure, along with strong regional and international partnerships.
Types of Marine Litter
There are many types of marine litter. Roughly 70 percent of marine litter, such as glass, metal, and all sorts of marine equipment and other refuse, sinks to the ocean floor, according to UNEP.

While marine litter consists of all sorts of materials, many plastics float or remain suspended in water, making them more visible. And many also are resistant to degradation and persist in the marine environment.
Impacts of Marine Litter
Marine litter is not only ugly - it can harm ocean ecosystems, wildlife, and humans. It can injure coral reefs and bottom dwelling species and entangle or drown ocean wildlife. Some marine animals ingest the litter and choke or starve. Medical waste (such as syringes), sharp objects, and large pieces of litter can pose a direct threat to humans. The economic impact of marine litter is thought to be significant.

The Top Ten Marine Litter Items
Adapted from UNEP (2009a) and compiled from the International Coastal Clean Ups' 1989-2007 reports of the Center for Marine Conservation/Ocean Conservancy.
Goal: Less Plastic in the Ocean
We know that plastics are essential to modern life. Plastics can enhance quality of life in ways that other materials cannot. Plastics can help prolong the freshness of food. They can help shield and transport sterilized medical supplies. They can meet resource needs and reduce waste, energy use, and emissions. And much more.

We can responsibly enjoy the benefits of plastics while also properly disposing or recycling used plastics. (The same goes for all types of materials that make up marine litter.)

A recent study found that the amount of plastic waste entering the ocean from land each year exceeds 4.8 million tons (Mt), and may be as high as 12.7 Mt The quantities of plastic entering the ocean are growing rapidly with the potential for cumulative inputs of plastic waste into the ocean as high as 250 Mt by 2025.

Discharges of plastic are spread around the globe from the 192 countries with coastal borders, but 20 countries account for 83% of the mismanaged plastic waste available to enter the ocean.

Of course, better marine litter prevention and ocean conservancy begins with better understanding of the root causes of ocean pollution.
What Causes Marine Litter?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is Marine Litter | Marine Litter Solutions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Marine litter is human-created waste that has been discharged into the coastal or marine environment. Specifically: "Marine debris" is defined to include any anthropogenic, manufactured, or processed solid material (regardless of size) discarded, disposed of, or abandoned in the environment, including all materials discarded into the sea, on the shore, or brought indirectly to the sea by rivers, sewage, storm water, waves, or winds."

# data[].attributes.body
http://plastic-pollution.org/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/oceans/critical-issues-marine-pollution/

# data[].attributes.headline
Online Database maps Ocean pollution and how it effects animals-Chris 

# data[].attributes.subject
Online Database maps Ocean pollution and how it effects animals-Chris 

# data[].attributes.body
an island with no people is covered with debris as if someone was living there. The South Pacific island is representing how plastic is damaging our environment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A remote South Pacific island has the highest density of plastic debris reported anywhere on the planet, our new study has found.

Our study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that more than 17 tonnes of plastic debris has washed up on Henderson Island, with more than 3,570 new pieces of litter arriving every day on one beach alone.

Jennifer Lavers, Author provided

It is estimated that there are nearly 38 million pieces of plastic on the island, which is near the centre of the South Pacific Gyre ocean current.

Google Maps

A 2014 paper published in the journal PLOS One used data from surface water all over the world. The researchers estimated that there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the top 10 centimetres of the world's oceans.

Plastics pose a major threat to seabirds and other animals, and most don't ever break down - they just break up. Every piece of petrochemical-derived plastic ever made still exists on the planet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This South Pacific island of rubbish shows why we need to quit our plastic habit

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A remote South Pacific island has the highest density of plastic debris reported anywhere on the planet, our new study has found. Our study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that more than 17 tonnes of plastic debris has washed up on Henderson Island, with more than 3,570 new pieces of litter arriving every day on one beach alone.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.body
It talks about how pcycling should never be the focus of preventing the pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article originally appeared on Oceans Deeply. For important news about our world's oceans, sign up to the Oceans Deeply email list.
When oil prices drop, as they have in recent years, recycling profits plummet. In most countries, it's cheaper to simply make new petroleum-based plastic goods than turn the ones used once into the same items again. That's led to a dismal recycling rate of just 9 percent worldwide, and an enormous buildup of plastic in the ocean, according to a recent study on global plastic production.

But as recycling rates drop and ocean pollution worsens, many innovators are taking marine debris, a notoriously unrecyclable material, and turning it into useful items. They're turning all types of marine plastic trash, from old fishing gear to bits of broken-down hard plastic called microplastic, into new products.

"I think it is viable if it means that marine debris increases in value, so the efforts to clean up get a higher priority," said Kristian Syberg, a plastics expert at Roskilde University in Denmark who has sailed through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch collecting samples of marine debris for analysis. "Such cleaning processes near coastal zones in highly polluted areas could potentially remove a lot of marine debris such as microplastics."

Products currently made from recycled ocean plastic include shampoo bottles, skateboards, sunglasses, athletic shoes, sportswear, doormats, jewelry and board shorts. Some companies involved in ocean plastic "upcycling" are reporting encouraging numbers in keeping marine debris out of landfills and the ocean.

Four years ago, Cape Porpoise Trading Company in Maine began making doormats out of old lobster trap ropes collected before they are lost or abandoned at sea.

"Since the company's inception, we've sold somewhere around 6,500 mats, and each mat uses about six pounds of rope, on average," said Kerin Burnett, the company's owner. "Through our work, we've kept nearly 40,000 pounds of rope out of landfills and the ocean."

Burnett said she reaches out to fishers on social media and asks for their unusable ropes. Although she pays them per pound, Burnett said that many fishers are happy to contribute their rope for free. Once the company picks up ropes, the staff cleans and sorts them according to color, then weaves the ropes into doormats.

Bureo recycles fishing nets in Chile that otherwise would be abandoned in the ocean into skateboards and sunglasses.

Upcycling should never be the focus of preventing the pollution.

And a partnership between sportswear company Adidas and conservation organization Parley for the Oceans, called "Adidas x Parley," scoops up marine debris and uses it to make athletic shoes. Adidas also has replaced plastic bags and packaging for more sustainable materials to reduce the amount of plastic flowing into the ocean.

"The mutual focus is on Parley's comprehensive Ocean Plastic Program, which is led by the Parley A.I.R. Strategy, Avoid, Intercept and Redesign, to prevent plastic entering our oceans and transform it into performance sportswear," said André Mendes, Adidas' senior manager of sustainability communications. "Spinning the problem into a solution, the threat into a thread."

In January, TerraCycle - which rewards people for sending their unrecyclable trash, such as granola bar wrappers and dog food packaging, to the company - unveiled a pilot Beach Plastic Cleanup Program. TerraCycle has partnered with consumer products giant Procter & Gamble to create the world's first shampoo bottle made of 25 percent recycled beach plastic. The plastic is sourced from people who collect it from local beaches. And Canadian environmental group the Ocean Legacy Foundation and cosmetics company Lush are collaborating on a project to make product bottles from recycled ocean plastic trash.

Using marine debris as a raw material has its challenges. Once it enters the ocean, a process called photodegradation breaks down the chemical bonds holding plastic together. The decomposition is also accelerated by wind and waves. Often the plastic upcyclers recover is covered with algae and barnacles.

Before it can be used, ocean plastic must be sorted, cleaned and broken down into small, uniform pieces. Then it's transformed into pellets that can be melted into various shapes.

But this process is time-consuming and sometimes expensive. And while experts say that upcycled products can raise awareness about marine debris, they note it is not the best way to address ocean plastic pollution.

"Upcycling should never be the focus of preventing the pollution," said Syberg. Instead, he said people should be encouraged to replace plastic with sustainable materials.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article originally appeared on Oceans Deeply. For important news about our world's oceans, sign up to the Oceans Deeply email list. When oil prices drop, as they have in recent years, recycling profits plummet. In most countries, it's cheaper to simply make new petroleum-based plastic goods than turn the ones used once into the same items again.

# data[].attributes.body
www.noaa.gov

Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/world/africa/kenya-plastic-bags-ban.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FWater%20Pollution&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=collection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Fruit and vegetable sellers were at a loss for how to market their produce, and some residents mistook ordinary traffic controllers for law enforcement officials looking to punish consumers who violated the new law. In informal settlements, where most of the city's residents live, plastic bags are used as "flying toilets" - holding human waste in the absence of a proper sewage system.

Judy Wakhungu, Kenya's environment minister, tried to allay people's fears, telling Reuters that the ban was primarily aimed at manufacturers and suppliers. "Ordinary wananchi will not be harmed," she said, using a Kiswahili word for "common person."

Kenya tried to ban the use of plastic bags in 2007 and 2011, but the limits were not put in place.

The new regulations call for a fine of $19,000 to $38,000 or a four-year jail term for those manufacturing or importing plastic bags in Kenya. Plastics used in primary industrial packaging are exempt, according to the National Environment Management Authority, although it said that the new regulation would prohibit retailers from selling garbage bags.

Kenyans have had several months to adjust to the idea of the new rules, a period during which big supermarket chains like Nakumatt and the French multinational retail giant Carrefour began offering cloth bags instead of plastic. The country's High Court last week rejected a case filed by two plastic bag importers to drop the ban, saying that protecting the environment was more important than the companies' commercial interests.

Before the ban went into effect, Chege Kariuki, the chairman of the Waste and Environment Management Association of Kenya, said that garbage collectors would be unable to operate without plastic bin liners. "Waste management in Nairobi will become impossible for all waste companies," he told The Star, a Kenyan newspaper.

Samuel Matonda, a spokesman for the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, said the new regulation could cost up to 60,000 jobs. "The knock-on effects will be very severe," Mr. Matonda told The Standard newspaper. "It will even affect the women who sell vegetables in the market - how will their customers carry their shopping home?"

In lieu of plastic, the Kenyan government has encouraged people to tote reusable alternatives, including bags made of paper, cloth and sisal, a plant with stiff leaves.

Worldwide, plastic bags contribute to eight million tons of plastic that leak into the ocean every year, according to the United Nations Environment Program. "At current rates, by 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish, wreaking havoc on marine fisheries, wildlife and tourism," the program said in a statement when Kenya's ban was announced in March.

Plastic bags can take hundreds of years to degrade, and polyethylene bags can strangle sea turtles and fill the stomachs of whales and dolphins until they die of starvation. In Kenya, livestock often graze on garbage, and bags are found in the stomachs of cows when they are slaughtered, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

Plastic pollution doesn't just hurt our planet - it ends up in the animals that inhabit it.
Act to #BeatPollution: https://t.co/WCvF8bTfqN pic.twitter.com/neIwRjyRI4
- UN Environment (@UNEP) Aug. 28, 2017

Njeri Kabeberi, the executive director of Greenpeace Africa, said Kenyans needed to switch to "100 percent" reusable and eco-friendly alternative packaging materials.

"We urge all Kenyans to know the importance of preserving the environment," she said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Kenya, Selling or Importing Plastic Bags Will Cost You $19,000 - or Jail

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fruit and vegetable sellers were at a loss for how to market their produce, and some residents mistook ordinary traffic controllers for law enforcement officials looking to punish consumers who violated the new law. In informal settlements, where most of the city's residents live, plastic bags are used as "flying toilets" - holding human waste in the absence of a proper sewage system.

# data[].attributes.body
it is about how they thought the ocean is negligible no matter how trash you put in it and how that it isn't true and it is the affecting the ocean.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.headline
plastic ocean pollution a driver of climate change

# data[].attributes.subject
plastic ocean pollution a driver of climate change

# data[].attributes.body
causes of global warming
yahir

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wikimedia Commons

Though burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean's surface.

Lanternfish ( aka myctophids) are only a few inches long typically but so ubiquitous that they account for over half the ocean's total fish-mass. They are vital to the ocean's ability to sequester more carbon than all the world's forests do on land through a daily mass migration playing out in all seven seas.

By day, lanternfish avoid predators in deep, dimly lit waters, then ascend nightly to the surface to gorge on carbon-rich plankton before descending back down where they deposit their carbon-rich poop. They also sequester carbon when eaten by larger fish.

This migratory ritual is central to the efficacy of marine environments in reducing human-caused CO ₂ emissions in the atmosphere - by an estimated 20-35 percent.

Thus, anything harmful to lanternfish could hinder the ocean's capacity to act as a carbon sink. Alarming evidence that small bits of floating plastic debris resemble the lanternfish's plankton diet could spell trouble for them and, consequently, the climate.
Lanternfish are consuming ocean plastics

Most plastics are still derived from petroleum and natural gas and, for practical purposes, are non-biodegradable, even though they fragment during weathering into progressively smaller pieces.

Marine debris accumulates in circulating ocean convergence zones called gyres. Since the groundbreaking discovery in 1999 that plastic debris outweighed zooplankton in the surface waters of the N. Pacific gyre by a ratio of 6:1, there has been concern that small plastic fragments might be mistaken for food by plankivorous sea life.

A follow-up study revealed that more than a third of the stomachs of lanternfish captured at the ocean's surface in the N. Pacific gyre contained plastic fragments, similar in size (1-3 mm) and color (clear, white and blue) to the area's zooplankton.

Ingestion of plastics by lanternfish likely explains an otherwise head-scratching finding. Mass quantities of plastics are disappearing from the surface waters of all five of the world's major gyres, mostly debris about 2 mm.

Intestinal blockage, malnutrition and starvation are obvious dangers of consuming plastic debris, though chemicals associated with marine plastics might pose greater threats.

Oily pollutants in seawater adsorb to the surface of plastics. Once ingested, there is potential for transfer up the food chain as smaller fish are eaten by larger ones.

Threat also stems from the building blocks of some polymers. Polycarbonate plastic, for example, is derived from BPA (bisphenol A), an estrogen mimicking endocrine disruptor that can produce developmental derangements. The basic constituents of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene plastics are known or suspected carcinogens.

The myriad of additives which impart desired properties to plastic products add additional concerns because they can leach out of ingested plastics into an organism's tissues. Phthalate plasticizers and polybrominated flame retardants are common additives which interfere with hormonal systems in mammals, for example.

A recent study documented contamination of lanternfish tissue with chemicals both manufactured into plastics and adsorbed from seawater.

Furthermore, the buoyancy of plastics might interfere with lanternfish's ability to complete its migration from the surface back down to deeper waters.
Ocean plastic pollution to increase further
Half of all plastics that ever existed were produced in just the last 13 years, according to a first-ever accounting of all plastic created anywhere on Earth. Of the 6300 million metric tons of plastic waste ever generated through 2015, roughly one-fifth has been recycled or incinerated, leaving four-fifths amassed in landfills or the natural environment.

If current trends prevail through 2050, landfills and the natural environment will have accumulated 12,000 million metric tons of plastic waste.

Another first-ever study estimated how much plastic waste is entering the ocean yearly from the discards of people in coastal countries worldwide - between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons.

Depending on buoyancy, some plastics float, others sink to the bottom or distribute throughout the water column. Given the ocean's expanse and influx rate of new plastics, open ocean cleanup schemes are not a feasible solution.
The Solution

At the heart of the climate crisis is mankind's dysfunctional relationship to fossil fuels. As in any bad relationship, ignoring the problem only kicks the can down the road while the problem continues to fester.

The road here leads to greater climate instability which portends more violent storms and droughts, spread of human diseases, mass species extinction and social, economic and political upheavals.

The needed relational shift is to transition from an economy based on fossil fuels as a primary source of energy and feedstock for manufactured goods to one thriving on renewable energy and manufactured goods which are biodegradable or easily recycled. Even conservative economists widely view a simple carbon tax as the most workable solution.
Sarah "Steve" Mosko is a long-time resident of Orange County and writer focused on the science behind environmental issues and solutions. Opinions expressed in editorials belong to the authors and not Voice of OC. Voice of OC is interested in hearing different perspectives and voices. If you want to weigh in on this issue or others please contact Voice of OC Involvement Editor Theresa Sears at TSears@voiceofoc.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mosko: Plastic Ocean Pollution a Driver of Climate Change?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wikimedia Commons Though burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean's surface.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/methodology/components/trash-pollution

# data[].attributes.body
pollution is harmful-intriguing!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and the shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It is located in the Northern Hemisphere and is almost completely surrounded by North America and Eurasia, including the countries of Russia, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Canada and the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every day, humans generate millions of tons of garbage. And although a lot of that litter ends up in landfills, some enters the ocean by accident or through illegal dumping. Now, researchers have compiled a new database that reveals just how widespread ocean litter is, from the infamous "garbage patches" of the North Pacific to piles of trash on beaches around the world and in the deep ocean. LITTERBASE, and its accompanying maps, together draw on data from more than a thousand studies from 1960 to 2017. The most polluted spots, which host more than 10 billion pieces of litter per square kilometer, include beaches and patches of sea off the coasts of South Korea and Jordan. Most of that litter-close to 70%-is plastics, with metal and glass contributing to the remainder. And microplastics, shards of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters, are particularly prevalent. That's because large pieces of litter break down in sunlight and ocean currents. All of our litter means that life under the sea isn't easy: The database also reveals that more than 1200 aquatic species-mammals, fish, crustaceans, and others-are coming into contact with the litter by eating it, living in it, or becoming entangled.

doi:10.1126/science.aal0998

Katherine Kornei is a freelance science writer based in Portland, Oregon.

More from ScienceShots

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Plastic makes up nearly 70% of all ocean litter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every day, humans generate millions of tons of garbage. And although a lot of that litter ends up in landfills, some enters the ocean by accident or through illegal dumping. Now, researchers have compiled a new database that reveals just how widespread ocean litter is, from the infamous "garbage patches" of the North Pacific to piles of trash on beaches around the world and in the deep ocean.

# data[].attributes.body
Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land. Air pollution is also a contributing factor by carrying off pesticides or dirt into the ocean. Land and air pollution have proven to be harmful to marine life and its habitats.

# data[].attributes.headline
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDE;Diakhou Thiam

# data[].attributes.subject
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDE;Diakhou Thiam

# data[].attributes.body
There is over 2.1 billion trash in our ocean and this is affecting our eco- system

# data[].attributes.headline
the way forward for reducing marine pollution~anilem toj

# data[].attributes.subject
the way forward for reducing marine pollution~anilem toj

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/blog/2017/3/7/The-way-forward-for-reducing-marine-pollution.html

  we should be more aware of the ocean habitat and enviroment.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution

# data[].attributes.body
Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land. Air pollution is also a contributing factor by carrying off pesticides or dirt into the ocean. Land and air pollution have proven to be harmful to marine life and its habitats.

# data[].attributes.headline
Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific by 

# data[].attributes.subject
Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific by 

# data[].attributes.body
kayla denney k

# data[].attributes.body
It talks about where does trash come from to get to the ocean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean.

# data[].attributes.headline
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDEDemitrie Greenwood, Jesus Garcia

# data[].attributes.subject
WHEN THE MERMAIDS CRY: THE GREAT PLASTIC TIDEDemitrie Greenwood, Jesus Garcia

# data[].attributes.body
half of our garbage ends up in the water
http://plastic-pollution.org/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Claire Le Guern
Last updated in November 2019.

Introduction

The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world's oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land.

For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years.(See: Worldwatch Institute - January 2015). In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by the end of 2015.

Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature.

Although inhabited and remote, South Sentinel island is covered with plastic! Plastic pollution and marine debris, South Sentinel Island, Bay of Bengal. Photo source: © SAF - Coastal Care

A simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and the plastic waste spectacle is present. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, staggeringly. Tons of plastic debris (which by definition are waste that can vary in size from large containers, fishing nets to microscopic plastic pellets or even particles) is discarded every year, everywhere, polluting lands, rivers, coasts, beaches, and oceans.

Published in the journal Science in February 2015, a study conducted by a scientific working group at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), quantified the input of plastic waste from land into the ocean. The results: every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. It's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. In 2025, the annual input is estimated to be about twice greater, or 10 bags full of plastic per foot of coastline. So the cumulative input for 2025 would be nearly 20 times the 8 million metric tons estimate - 100 bags of plastic per foot of coastline in the world!

Lying halfway between Asia and North America, north of the Hawaiian archipelago, and surrounded by water for thousands of miles on all sides, the Midway Atoll is about as remote as a place can get. Although some delivery services in Europe will use paper packaging. However, Midways' isolation has not spared it from the great plastic tide either, receiving massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the North Pacific circular motion of currents (gyre). Midways' beaches, covered with large debris and millions of plastic particles in place of the sand, are suffocating, envenomed by the slow plastic poison continuously washing ashore.

Then, on shore, the spectacle becomes even more poignant, as thousands of bird corpses rest on these beaches, piles of colorful plastic remaining where there stomachs had been. In some cases, the skeleton had entirely biodegraded; yet the stomach-size plastic piles are still present, intact. Witnesses have watched in horror seabirds choosing plastic pieces, red, pink, brown and blue, because of their similarity to their own food. It is estimated that of the 1.5 million Laysan Albatrosses which inhabit Midway, all of them have plastic in their digestive system; for one third of the chicks, the plastic blockage is deadly, coining Midway Atoll as "albatross graveyards" by five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, who recently filmed and photographed the catastrophic effects of the plastic pollution there.

Albatross, victim of plastic ingestion. Photo: Unknown.

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life on shore and off shore. In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different animal species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, as well as millions of birds and fishes.

The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP), estimated that land-based sources account for up to 80 percent of the world's marine pollution, 60 to 95 percent of the waste being plastics debris.

However, most of the littered plastic waste worldwide ultimately ends up at sea. Swirled by currents, plastic litter accumulates over time at the center of major ocean vortices forming "garbage patches", i.e. larges masses of ever-accumulating floating debris fields across the seas. The most well known of these "garbage patches" is the Great North Pacific Garbage Patch, discovered and brought to media and public attention in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore. Yet some others large garbage patches are highly expected to be discovered elsewhere, as we'll see further.

The plastic waste tide we are faced with is not only obvious for us to clearly see washed up on shore or bobbing at sea. Most disconcertingly, the overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean.

Slow, silent, omnipresent, ever increasing, more toxic than previously thought, the plastic pollution's reality bears sobering consequences, as recently unveiled by the report of Japanese chemist Katsuhiko Saido at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in August 2009 and the findings from the Project Kaisei and Scripps (Seaplex) scientific cruise-expeditions collecting seawater samples from the Great Garbage Patch. Both, the reports and expeditions uncovered new evidence of how vast and "surprisingly" (as it was termed at the ACS meeting) toxic the plastic presence in the marine environment is.

Extremely littered beach in northern Norway. Photo source: ©© Bo Eide

Environmentalists have long denounced plastic as a long-lasting pollutant that does not fully break down, in other terms, not biodegradable. In 2004, a study lead by Dr Richard Thompson at the University of Plymouth, UK, reported finding great amount of plastic particles on beaches and waters in Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. They reported that small plastic pellets called "mermaids tears", which are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste, have indeed spread across the world's seas. Some plastic pellets had fragmented to particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while some cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. They are not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it, and ultimately are ingested by marine animals and zooplankton (Plankton that consists of tiny animals, such as rotifers, copepods, and krill, larger animals eggs and larvae's and of microorganisms once classified as animals, such as dinoflagellates and other protozoans.). This plastic micro-pollution, with its inherent toxicity and consequences on the food chain, had yet to be studied...

Dr Saido's study was the first one to look at what actually happens over the years to these tons of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans. The study presents an alarming fact: these tons of plastic waste reputed to be virtually indestructible, do decompose with surprising speed, at much lower temperature than previously thought possible, and release toxic substances into the seawater, namely bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer. These chemicals are considered toxic and can be metabolized subsequent to ingestion, leading Dr Saido to state "...plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contaminations that will persist long into the future".

This past August a different study, from a group of oceanography students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), UCSD, accompanied by the international organization Project Kaisei's team, embarked on two vessels, New Horizon and Kaisei, through the North Pacific Ocean to sample plastic debris and garbage. SIO director Tony Haymet described the trip as " ...a forage into the great plastic garbage patch in the north." To summarize the scientific data collected on the ship, Miriam Goldstein, chief scientist on New Horizon, stated: "We did find debris... coming up in our nets in over 100 consecutive net tows over a distance of 1,700 miles... It is pretty shocking." She said, "[There is] not a big island, not a garbage dump [that we] can really see easily." She described it more as a place where large debris floats by a ship only occasionally, but a lot of tiny pieces of plastic exist below the surface of the water. "Ocean pretty much looks like ocean," she said. "The plastic fragments are mostly less than a quarter inch long and are below the surface. It took at first a magnifying-glass to see the true extent of plastic damage in the North Pacific."

The overwhelmingly largest unquantifiable plastic mass is just made of confetti-like fragmented pieces of plastic.

In a press conference in September 2009, the director of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Maziar Movassaghi, referring to Project Kaisei's findings, held a small glass bottle filled with seawater sampled at the Great North Garbage Patch. Inside was murky seawater with hundreds of fragmented plastics pieces: "That is what we have to stop".

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms, are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. The world population "... (is) eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste." (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress).

Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

The scientists from Project Kaisei and Scripps hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of these debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger." We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet.

The "Silent World" is shedding mermaid tears. A plastic-poison has undeniably been instilled by us, prompting an unwilling and illegitimate confrontation of two titans: one synthetic (plastic), the other oceanic. The crisis is of massive proportion. An unprecedented plastic tide has occurred, pervasively affecting the world's oceans, beaches, coasts, seafloor, animals and ultimately, us.

I: The Great Plastic Tide: Magnitude, Scope, Extent

A full understanding of the magnitude and scope of this plastic pollution starts with clear definitions as to what and why it is happening. Thus, we will define the notions of marine debris, gyres, and oceanic garbage patches, or giant floating marine debris field, as first discovered in the North Pacific by Captain Charles Moore's, since referred to as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP).

Marine Debris and Plastic

Krichim, Boat in plastic, April 25, 2009. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff

Marine Debris

The term marine debris has been used for at least 25 years to refer to man-made materials that have been discarded or lost into the ocean. The earliest references come from the 1984 Workshop on the Impacts and Fate of Marine Debris (Shomura and Yoshida 1985). This workshop came out of a 1982 request from the Marine Mammal Commission to the National Marine Fisheries Service to examine the impacts of marine debris. At that time, the focus of research was primarily on derelict fishing gear. Keep in mind that this was prior to the implementation of both the high-seas driftnet ban and MARPOL Annex V.

Other terms used prior to 1984 include the following: man-made debris (Feder et all 1978), synthetic debris (Balazs 1979), plastic litter (Merrell 1980), floating plastic debris (Morris 1980), man-made objects (Shaughnessy 1980, Venrick et al 1973), and debris (Scordino and Fisher 1983).

It would appear that the term debris was being used in these articles by academics as something discarded: litter.

The term marine debris encompasses more than plastic, including metals (derelict vessels, dumped vehicles, beverage containers), glass (light bulbs, beverage containers, older fishing floats), and other materials (rubber, textiles, lumber). Plastic certainly makes up the majority of floating litter, but in some areas the debris on the ocean floor may contain sizeable amounts of those other denser types.

Scientists have similarly and more simply defined marine debris as, any manufactured or processed solid waste material that enters the ocean environment from any source (Coe & Rogers, 1997). Marine debris is definitely characterized as human-created waste that has deliberately or accidentally become afloat. They tend to accumulate at the centre of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter.

The US Congress passed a bill in 2006, The Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act, to create a program to address the marine debris pollution. One of the requirements in the bill was for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the U.S. Coast Guard, to promulgate a definition of marine debris for the purposes of the Act. Thus, USCG and NOAA drafted and published a definition of marine debris in September 2009. The definition is this: "Any persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, disposed of or abandoned into the marine environment or the Great Lakes." Marine debris can come in many forms, from a plastic soda bottle to a derelict vessel. Types and components of marine debris include plastics, glass, metal, Styrofoam, rubber, derelict fishing gear, and derelict vessels.

UNEP has defined marine debris, or marine litter, as "any persistent, manufactured, processed, or solid material discarded, disposed of, or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment." This is an even more global and comprehensive definition, as it does include the marine and correlated coastal impact of the aforementioned litter.

Plastic pollution covering the shore, Morocco.Photo: © SAF - Coastal Care

As we mentioned supra, land-based sources of debris account for up to 80 percent of the world's marine pollution. Such debris is unquestionably one of the world's most pervasive pollution problems affecting our beaches, coasts, oceans, seafloors, inland waterways and lands. It affects the economies and inhabitants of coastal and waterside communities worldwide. The effect of coastal littering is obviously compounded by vectors, such as rivers and storm drains, discharging litter from inland urban areas. Obviously, ocean current patterns, climate and tides, and proximity to urban centers, industrial and recreational areas, shipping lanes, and commercial fishing grounds influence the types and amount of debris that is found in the open ocean or collected along beaches, coasts and waterways, above and below the water's edge.

The other 20 percent of this debris is from dumping activities on the water, including vessels (from small power and sailboats to large transport ships carrying people and goods), offshore drilling rigs and platforms, and fishing piers.

Over the past 60 years, organic materials, once the most common form of debris, have yielded to synthetic elements as the most abundant material in solid waste. Marine litter is now 60 to 80 percent plastic, reaching 95 percent in some areas, according to a report by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (created by Charles Moore), published in October 2008 in Environmental Research.

Citarum River, flowing to the Sea, is the main source of houselhold water for Jakarta.(14million people). Photo source: photobucket

Around and around, worldwide, at distant seas, or merely bobbing among the waves before washing up ultimately on shore, a daily and ever too common plastic spectacle is unveiled: bottles, plastic bags, fishnets, clothing, lighters, tires, polystyrene, containers, plastics shoes, just a myriad of man-made items, all sharing a common origin: us.

Yearly data adds to the despondent reality of how extensively the plastic tide is increasingly affecting world's beaches and coasts. Launched in 1986 by the Ocean Conservancy, the Center for Marine Conservation's annual International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) has grown into the world's largest volunteer effort to collect data on the marine environment. Held the third Saturday of each September, the International Coastal Cleanup engages the public to remove trash and debris from the coasts, beaches, waterways, underwater, and on lands to identify the sources of debris. It is a compelling global snapshot of marine debris collected on one day at thousands of sites all over the world. The 2008, 23rd ICC reported that 104 countries and locations, from Bahrain to Bangladesh, and in 42 US States, from southern California to the rocky coast of Maine, had participated. The overwhelming percentage of debris collected was plastics and smoking paraphernalia. The 2008 report states that plastic litter has increased by 126 percent since ICC first survey in 1994. The top 3 items found in 2008 were cigarettes butts, plastic bags, and food wrappers/containers.

Durable and slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products, from containers for beverage bottles, packing straps and tarps, and synthetic nylon materials used in fishing line, all become debris with staying power. Plastics debris accumulates because it does not biodegrade as many other substances do; although it will photo degrade on exposure to sunlight and does decompose, more rapidly than previously thought. (We will explain these processes as we study the nature and properties of plastic itself infra.).

In addition, most of these plastic waste items are highly buoyant, allowing them to travel in currents for thousands of miles, endangering marine ecosystems and wildlife along the way. Marine debris is a global transboundary pollution problem.

Icelandic shore. The marine area around Iceland is considered as one of the cleanest of the world. Photo Source: Clean up the Coastline, Veraldarvinir

The instillation of plastic in an oceanic world vests a terrible reality. Because of the properties of plastic as a synthetic material and because of the absence of boundary, vastness, currents and winds at seas, this resilient polluting material is being spread worldwide by an even more powerful vehicle, the seas. It appears then daunting, impossible, a priori, to control, efficiently clean-up, remedy effectively, even sufficiently study the plastic pollution. This unwilling confrontation of titans, one plastic the other oceanic, has become ineluctably a crisis of massive proportion.

Plastic

The paucity of concerted and definitive scientific data/research in this matter is staggering compared to the extent of the problem.
Only in 1997, with Captain Charles Moore's discovery, was the plastic waste pollution in the ocean widely brought to media light and finally began to receive more serious attention from the public and the scientific world, stepping the way to more exhaustive research about plastic and its consequences and effects when entering marine life.

Of the 260 million tons of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the Ocean, according to a Greenpeace report (Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, 2006). Seventy percent of the mass eventually sinks, damaging life on the seabed. The rest floats in open seas, often ending up in gyres, circular motion of currents, forming conglomerations of swirling plastic trash called garbage patches, or ultimately ending up washed ashore on someone's beach.

But the washed up or floating plastic pollution is a lot more than an eyesore or a choking/entanglement hazard for marine animals or birds. Once plastic debris enters the water, it becomes one of the most pervasive problems because of plastic's inherent properties: buoyancy, durability (slow photo degradation), propensity to absorb waterborne pollutants, its ability to get fragmented in microscopic pieces, and more importantly, its proven possibility to decompose, leaching toxic Bisphenol A (BPA) and other toxins in the seawater.

"Plastics are a contaminant that goes beyond the visual", says Bill Henry of the Long Marine Laboratory, UCSC.

Seal trapped in plastic pollution. Photo: ©© Tedxgp2

But before we develop further the realities and consequences of the plastic-covered beaches, seafloor and plastic-instilled seawater, it is necessary to present simple facts about plastic itself.

Facts About Plastic

What is plastic?

A simple definition could be: any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened, including many types of resins, resinoids, polymers, cellulose derivatives, casein materials, and proteins: used in place of other materials, as glass, wood, and metals, in construction and decoration, for making many articles, as coatings, and, drawn into filaments, for weaving. They are often known by trademark names, as Bakelite, Vinylite, or Lucite.

In chemistry, plastics are large molecules, called polymers, composed of repeated segments, called monomers, with carbon backbones. A polymer is simply a very large molecule made up of many smaller units joined together, generally end to end, to create a long chain. The smallest building block of a polymer is called a monomer. Polymers are divided into two distinct groups: thermoplastics (moldable) and thermosets (not). The word "plastics" generally applies to the synthetic products of chemistry.

Alexander Parkes created the first man-made plastic and publicly demonstrated it at the 1862 Great International Exhibition in London. The material, called parkesine, was an organic material derived from cellulose that, once heated, could be molded and retained its shape when cooled.
Many, but not all, plastic products have a number - the resin identification code - molded, formed or imprinted in or on the container, often on the bottom. This system of coding was developed in 1988 by the U.S.-based Society of the Plastics Industry to facilitate the recycling of post-consumer plastics. It is indeed, quite interesting to go through the fine lines.

1. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) - Used in soft drink, juice, water, beer, mouthwash, peanut butter, salad dressing, detergent, and cleaner containers. Leaches antimony trioxide and (2ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP).

2. DEHP is an endocrine disruptor that mimics the female hormone estrogen. It has been strongly linked to asthma and allergies in children. It may cause certain types of cancer and it has been linked to negative effects on the liver, kidney, spleen, bone formation, and body weight. In Europe, DEHP has been banned since 1999 from use in plastic toys for children under the age of three.

3. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) - Used in opaque milk, water, and juice containers, bleach, detergent and shampoo bottles, garbage bags, yogurt and margarine tubs, and cereal box liners. Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

4. Polyvinyl chloride (V or Vinyl or PVC) - Used in toys, clear food and non-food packaging (e.g., cling wrap), some squeeze bottles, shampoo bottles, cooking oil and peanut butter jars, detergent and window cleaner bottles, shower curtains, medical tubing, and numerous construction products (e.g., pipes, siding). PVC has been described as one of the most hazardous consumer products ever created. Leaches di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) or butyl benzyl phthalate (BBzP), depending on which is used as the plasticizer or softener (usually DEHP). DEHP and BBzP are endocrine disruptors mimicking the female hormone estrogen; have been strongly linked to asthma and allergic symptoms in children; may cause certain types of cancer; and linked to negative effects on the liver, kidney, spleen, bone formation, and body weight. In Europe, DEHP, BBzP, and other dangerous phthalates have been banned from use in plastic toys for children under three since 1999. Not so elsewhere, including Canada and the United States.
Dioxins are unintentionally, but unavoidably, produced during the manufacture of materials containing chlorine, including PVC and other chlorinated plastic feedstocks. Dioxin is a known human carcinogen and the most potent synthetic carcinogen ever tested in laboratory animals. A characterization by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of cancer causing potential evaluated dioxin as over 10,000 times more potent than the next highest chemical (diethanol amine), half a million times more than arsenic, and a million or more times greater than all others.

5. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) - Used in grocery store, dry cleaning, bread and frozen food bags, most plastic wraps, and squeezable bottles (honey, mustard). Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

6. Polypropylene (PP) - Used in ketchup bottles, yogurt and margarine tubs, medicine and syrup bottles, straws, and Rubbermaid and other opaque plastic containers, including baby bottles. Considered a safer plastic. Research on risks associated with this type of plastic is ongoing.

7. Polystyrene (PS) - Used in Styrofoam containers, egg cartons, disposable cups and bowls, take-out food containers, plastic cutlery, and compact disc cases. Leaches styrene, an endocrine disruptor mimicking the female hormone estrogen, and thus has the potential to cause reproductive and developmental problems. Long-term exposure by workers has shown brain and nervous system effects and adverse effects on red blood cells, liver, kidneys, and stomach in animal studies. Also present in secondhand cigarette smoke, off gassing of building materials, car exhaust, and possibly drinking water. Styrene migrates significantly from polystyrene containers into the container's contents when oily foods are heated in such containers.

8. Other - This is a catchall category that includes anything that does not come within the other six categories. As such, one must be careful in interpreting this category because it includes polycarbonate - a dangerous plastic - but it also includes the new, safer, biodegradable bio-based plastics made from renewable resources such as corn and potato starch and sugar cane. Polycarbonate is used in many plastic baby bottles, clear plastic sippy cups, sports water bottles, three and five gallon large water storage containers, metal food can liners, some juice and ketchup containers, compact discs, cell phones, computers. Polycarbonate leaches Bisphenol A (some effects described above) and numerous studies have indicated a wide array of possible adverse effects from low-level exposure to Bisphenol A: chromosome damage in female ovaries, decreased sperm production in males, early onset of puberty, various behavioral changes, altered immune function, and sex reversal in frogs.

Rob Krebs of the American Plastics Council notes that people value plastics for exactly what creates the most problems at sea and on lands: their durability.

Plastic debris, of all sizes and shapes, is a transboundary pollution problem with a powerful vehicle, the ocean.

Vacha Dam near town of Krichim, April 25, 2009. Photo: Dimitar Dilkoff

Buoyancy

Plastics travel long distances. Their distribution in the oceans isn't uniform, yet they are omnipresent from the Polar Regions to the Equator. Scientists are still refining methods to detect and analyze the materials. A good example of plastic debris' buoyancy is as follows. In 1992, twenty containers full of rubber ducks were lost overboard from a ship traveling from China to Seattle. By 1994, some had been tracked to Alaska, while others reached Iceland in 2000. The ducks (with a distinctive logo on their base) have been sighted in the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (Ebbesmeyer, 2003).

Photodegradation Vs. Biodegradation

Plastic is generally a durable material. Its durability has made the culprit of the problem since it is considered resistant to natural biodegradation processes, i.e. the microbes that break down other substances do not recognize plastic as food. Yet plastic can be fragmented with the effects of UV, being broken down by light in smaller and smaller debris over time.

Biodegradation, the breaking down of organic substances by natural means, happens all the time in nature. All plant-based, animal-based, or natural mineral-based substances will over time biodegrade. In its natural state raw crude oil will biodegrade, but man-made petrochemical compounds made from oil, such as plastic, will not. Why not? Because plastic is a combination of elements extracted from crude oil then re-mixed up by men in white coats. Because these combinations are man made they are unknown to nature. Consequently, it has been thought that there is no natural system to break them down. The enzymes and the micro organisms responsible for breaking down organic materials that occur naturally such as plants, dead animals, rocks and minerals, don't recognize them. This means that plastic products are said indestructible, in a biodegradable sense at least.

In sum, as time passes, we know that plastic will eventually photo-degrade, i.e. break down into smaller and smaller fragments by exposure to the sun. The photo-degradation process continues down to the molecular level, yet photo-degraded plastic remains a polymer. No matter how small the pieces, they are still and always will be plastic, i.e. they are not absorbed into or changed by natural processes. At sea, the plastic fragmentation process occurs as well, due to wave, sand action, and oxidation. Estimates for plastic degradation at sea has been ranged from 450 to 1,000 years.

Of particular concern are the floating small plastic fragments often referred in the media to as mermaids' tears, which are tiny nurdles of raw plastic resin that form the building material of every manufactured plastic product, or are granules of domestic waste that have fragmented over the years. Dr Richard Thompson of the University of Plymouth, UK has identified plastic particles thinner than the diameter of a human hair. But while they cannot be seen, those pieces are still there and are still plastic. Not absorbed into the natural system, they just float around within it. He estimates that there are 100,000 particles of plastic per sq km of seabed and 300,000 items of plastic per sq km of sea surface.

Either way, mermaid tears, or fragmented plastic debris, reaching microscopic size over time, remain everywhere and are almost impossible to clean up. They are light enough to float in the wind, landing in the earth's oceans. Mermaid's tears are often found in filter feeders like mussels, barnacle, lugworm and amphipods.

Thus, the photo degradation of plastic debris makes the matter worse. Plastic becomes microscopic, invisible, yet ever polluting waters, beaches, coasts, seafloor, being eaten by even tinier marine organisms, therefore entering the food chain insidiously and ineluctably.

Toxic Sponge

Corroborating reports and findings worldwide demonstrated that fragmented plastics debris' increase and massive presence on and off shores does constitute reason for raised worries and awareness.

Studies on small plastic pellet by Dr Richard Thompson and by Hideshige Takada, Yukie Mato professor of organic geochemistry at Tokyo University, have shown that plastic debris meeting other pollutants in the oceans absorbs harmful chemicals from the sea water they float in, acting like a pollution sponges.

These studies have been conducted on plastic nurdles not just because of their uniform size and shape, thus easier to study and compare by scientifics, but also because of their wide spread presence on the world's beaches.

In UK, mermaid tears are the second common plastic litter found on the beaches according to the Marine Conservation Society's 2007 data and a Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) report.

According to Charles Moore, these resin pellets account for around 8 percent of annual oil production and are the raw material for the 260 million tons of plastic consumed yearly worldwide. Lightweight and small, they escape in untold volumes during transport and manufacture and wash in the ocean.

Even though these researches have been conducted on nurdles, it is crucial to keep in mind, as Dr. Takada team confirmed, that other types of plastic debris (from fishing gear, shopping bags, to small fragments) displays the exact same propensity as the nurdles of raw plastic resin to absorb toxins.

Nurdles covered beach. Photo Source: Algalita Foundation

Plastic resin pellets are round, shiny and tiny, mostly less than 5mm in diameter. The very structure of the plastic material is oily and greasy (basically plastics are solid oil) therefore promoting the accumulation of hydrophobic contaminants (ones that tend to repel and not absorb water) from the surrounding seawater. Chemicals like PCB's and DDE are very hydrophobic. It was shown that plastic pellets suck up these dangerous persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and toxins with a concentration factor that's almost 1 million times greater compared to the overall concentration of the chemicals in seawater. In other words, waterborne hydrophobic pollutants do collect and magnify on the surface of plastic debris, thus making plastic far more deadly in the ocean than it would be on land.

These findings, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, were based on samples gathered from 30 beaches in 17 countries. PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyls) pollutant concentrations on plastic pellet were highest on US coasts, followed by Western Europe and Japan. The highest concentrations of DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), the most toxic of all pesticides, were found on the US west coast and Vietnam.

Plastic marine debris, thought to be "indestructible", "lasting forever", has been shown to decompose faster than previously thought, under unexpected conditions (in the water and at sea temperature) and, most importantly, releasing toxic substances not found in the natural element: seawater.

Decompose

Since plastics belong to a chemical family of high polymers, they are essentially made up of a long chain of molecules containing repeated units of carbon atoms. Because of this inherent molecular stability (high molecular weight), plastics do not easily breakdown into simpler components.

North America, touched landscape. Photo Source: photobucket

Plastics do decompose, though not fully, over a very long period of time (in average 100 to 500 years). Commercially available plastics (polyolefins like polyethylene, polypropylene, etc.) have been further made resistant to decomposition by means of additional stabilizers like antioxidants. Thus, unless the plastic is specially designed to decompose in the soil, such materials can last a very long time because the chemical bonds that hold the molecules together are often stronger than nature's power to take them apart. This means that soil microorganisms that can easily attack and decompose things like wood and other formerly living materials cannot break the various kinds of strong bonds that are common to most plastics. This depends upon the plastic (polymer) and the environment to which it is exposed.

The Marine Conservancy has published that the estimated decomposition rates of most plastic debris found on coasts are:

Foamed plastic cups: 50 years

Plastic beverage holder: 400 years

Disposable diapers: 450 year

Plastic bottle: 450

Fishing line: 600 years.

Until Dr. Saido's report, no studies had been conducted on plastic decomposition at low temperature in the marine environment, owing to the mistaken conception that plastic does practically not decompose in such condition. In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste drifting in the world's oceans, researchers, lead by Katsuhiko Saido, PhD, reported that plastic does "decompose with surprising speed (as little as a year) and release potentially toxic substances into the water."

These findings were reported on August 19, 2009, at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The scientists there termed the discovery "surprising."

Dr. Saido described a new method to simulate the breakdown of plastic products at low temperatures (30º Celsius, 86º F), such as those found in some oceans. David Barnes, marine ecologist from the British Antarctic Survey, expressed that the Japanese's team lab results cannot be applied uniformly across the ocean. However, even though the decomposition process would not occur in much cooler seawater as Barnes mentioned, the oceans are vast, currents are constant and permanent, nothing stays static and furthermore, it seems that garbage patches where plastics accumulate, are to be found in even greater dimension in the South Gyres, in the tropical and sub tropical zones with very warm waters. One of the researchers stated: "Even at 30 degrees Celsius, the plastic decomposes. In natural conditions, the tide comes in and sunlight heats the plastics [which increases decomposition]."

The type of plastic studied by Saido's team was polystyrene, a white foamed plastic, commonly known by the trademark Styrofoam.

The process involved modeling plastic decomposition at room temperature, removing heat from the plastic and then using a liquid to extract the BPA and PS Oligomer that are not found naturally, thus must have been created through the decomposition of the plastic. Once degraded, the plastic was shown to release three new compounds not found in nature: styrene monomer (SM), styrene dimer (SD) and styrene trimer (ST). While SM is already a known carcinogen, SD and ST are suspected to be as well.

Plastics are not metabolized subsequent to ingestion since they are polymers. On the other hand, low molecular compounds such as PS oligomer or BPA from plastic decomposition are toxic and can be metabolized!

Samples of sea sand and seawater collected from Europe, India, Japan and the Pacific Ocean were found to be contaminated, with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition.
"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable," said study lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D. "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future."

This latest study clearly shows new micro-pollution by compounds generated by plastic decomposition to be taking place out of sight in the ocean, leaching toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA) and derivatives of polystyrene.

Even though present in seawater and sands, the pollutants are found in highest concentration in areas heavily littered with plastic debris, such as ocean vortices, which bring us to define more specifically the notion of gyres and "garbage patches".

Gyres and Garbage Patches

The plastic litter defacing the beaches of the World, alarming in Hawaiian archipelagos for instance, led, only two decades ago, a couple of private and public teams of environmentalists and scientists to start conducting research regarding marine debris in the oceans.

Between 1985 and 1988, an Alaska- based team of researchers found high concentrations of marine debris accumulating in regions governed by vortices like pattern of ocean currents, which lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States to publish a paper, in 1988, mentioning the high probability of the existence of "a large area highly concentrating plastic waste debris in the North Pacific". Flyovers of the area have been conducted as well, but not in a conclusive way. The trash was not that obvious from the sky. Indeed, despite its size and density, the GGP is not visible from satellite photography because of its consistency, as Kaisei project and Scripps teams confirmed last August. The largest mass of the plastic pollution contains fragmented pieces of plastic, permeating the ocean, almost invisible to the naked eye, suspended at, or beneath the surface of the ocean.

Plastic soup. Photo: Charles Moore

As evoked above, Charles Moore, a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist, and researcher, was crossing the Pacific Ocean while returning from a trans Pacific sailing race in 1997. He veered from the usual sea route taking a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Ocean. He came upon an area, the Doldrums, a windless part of the ocean that mariners usually avoid. The area is filled with tiny phytoplankton, but few big fish or mammals, thus fishermen and sailors rarely travel through it. There, Charles Moore saw an ocean he had never known. Every time he stepped out on deck, "there were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic."

This area that Charles Moore came upon, the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, is a slowly moving, clockwise spiral or vortex of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. He reported his find to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, who named it the Eastern Garbage Patch.
Shocked by the extent of the plastic litter, Charles Moore went on alerting the world to the existence of this phenomenon.

Moore's discovery was finally corroborating previous scientists's, suspicions and extrapolations in regard to the existence of a high debris concentration in stable bodies of oceanic waters created over time by the rotating ring-like ocean currents system called gyres.

"We were out in the middle of the Pacific, where you would think the ocean would be pristine," recalls the Alguita's captain, Charles Moore. "...And instead, we get the Exxon Valdez of plastic-bag spills."

Captain Moore's giant floating debris field's discovery has since been subject to other expeditions, and another "patch" was found further west.

Media light was finally brought in force at that point. Human kind has walked on the moon since 1969...yet the ocean was still quite an unknown frontier in our collective conscience.

Gyres

The North Pacific gyre has given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating plastic debris, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP). It is a gyre of marine litter in the Central North Pacific Ocean stretching for hundreds of miles across the ocean 1,000 miles from California coast on the East, to Japan and Hawaii on the West.

More specifically, a gyre is a large-scale circular feature made up of ocean currents that spiral around a central point, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Gyres make up to 40 percent of the ocean. That is 25 percent of the globe. All of them are accumulators of debris, Moore says.

Worldwide, there are five major subtropical oceanic gyres: the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre. Since each behaves in the same vortex style, scientists are certain that massive conglomerates of marine litter like the North Pacific Garbage Patch exist in each of the world's oceans. That is soberingly self-explanatory: such huge garbage patch, or even larger ones, are more than likely to be discovered in the near future.

North Pacific Gyre. Illustration: NOAA

It is very difficult to measure the exact size of a gyre because it is a fluid system, but the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is roughly estimated to be approximately 7 to 9 million square miles, approximately three times the area of the continental United States (3 million square miles). Gyres do potentially aggregate debris on that large a scale. That is titanic.

Upon returning from their 22 days venture on the GGP, Project Kaisei and Scripps scientists' stated in a press conference held in September 2009: "(we) hope our data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine plastic debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger. "We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.

Garbage Patches

The Great Garbage patch is two separate accumulations connected by a 6,000-mile marine litter "corridor" known as the North Pacific Convergence Zone (STCZ). As will be explained infra, the convergence zone is in itself another serious accumulator of traveling plastic debris.

The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch floats between Japan and Hawaii; the Western Patch floats between Hawaii and California. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from as far as Asia to the USA. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris inward, trapping debris in higher concentrations in the calm center. Ocean currents carry debris from the East coast of Asia to the center, in less than a year, and from the Western US in about 5 years.

North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Illustration: Greenpeace

NOAA has tracked the Great Pacific Garbage Patch movements to some degree. It is not a stationary area, but one that moves and changes as much as a thousand miles north and south, and during warmer ocean periods, known as El Nino, it drifts even further south. The movements occur because the North Pacific Gyre is made up of four different currents: the North Pacific Current to the north; the California Current to the west; the North Equatorial Current to the south; and the Kuroshio Current to the east. This movement sometimes brings the Western Garbage Patch within 500 nautical miles of the California coast and causes extraordinary massive debris pile-ups on beaches, such as in the Hawaiian Islands and Japan.

Great Garbage patch, floating debris. Photo Source: flyaddicts

The name garbage patch has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items, such as bottles and other litter, akin to a literal blanket of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is simply not true. While larger litter items can be found in this area, along with other debris such as derelict fishing nets, the largest mass of the debris is small bits of floatable plastic.

We cannot emphasize enough that the GGP is now characterized by extremely high concentrations of suspended plastic debris for 90 percent, basically a soupy mix of plastic-filled seawater, made of tiny plastic debris that have been trapped by the currents and stretching for maybe thousands of miles, and that is the great problem.

Indeed, the researchers from Project Kaisei and the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), after their journey through the area, collecting samples the whole way, reported: "All we could see, not at first glance but with magnifying glass and magnifying worries, for miles and miles, was an incredibly huge mass of confetti-like tiny mermaid tears, plastic fragments, floating just beneath the surface. " As one of the scientist from the Project Kaisei witnessed: "There's no island, there's no eighth continent " Miriam Goldstein said, "It doesn't look like a garbage dump. It looks like beautiful ocean. But then when you put the nets in the water, you see all the little pieces." And while the expedition covered 1,700 miles, members of the Kaisei team say the patch could be much, much larger...

As for its depth and assumed density, the scientists reported that the GGP's waters were just clogged with plastic particles to a depth of 10 meters below the surface. The Scripps/ Kaisei survey mission of the gyre found that plastic debris was present in 100 consecutive samples taken at varying depths and net sizes.

In sum, they estimated the patch area ranged in size from 700,00 km2 to more than 15 million km2; the area may contain over 100 million tons of plastic debris.

Already in 1999, a study by Charles Moore, sampling waters from the GGP, found that the concentrations of plastic there reached one million particles per square mile, topping the concentration of zooplankton (plankton consisting of small animals and the immature stages of larger animals) by a factor of six. In 2008, the published new research from the Algalita foundation team of scientists estimated that the number had doubled.

After the return of the two vessels from Project Kasei and Scripps (Seaplex), Kaisei and New Horizon, the only certainty was that the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch remains uncertain. "It's not a hard and fast number." There has been extensive media coverage about the garbage patch over the past couple years; however, its reported size and mass have differed from news article to article. "It's a little bit like a whirlpool on the surface of a river or a lake. You'd be hard-pressed to tell me where the edge is. All you know is that it's stronger in the middle than it is in the outer reaches. But it's an area of many hundreds of miles, perhaps thousands, in which the ocean currents tend to bring it together," according to Robert Knox, deputy director for research at the Scripps Institution.

In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second expedition to the North Pacific Gyre where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research and, in particular, to test an array of larger marine debris collection systems.

Marine debris collection at the GGP. Photo: Lindsey Hoshaw

The Eastern Garbage Patch has been studied the most so far, yet it is not and obviously cannot be the only vast oceanic "rubbish dump out there" says Charles Moore. The GGP is definitely not the only type of area where marine debris concentrates. Several other features within the ocean, including oceanic eddies and convergence zones, can lead to debris accumulation as well. A great and well known example is the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ). It is located along the southern edge of an area known as the North Pacific Transition Zone. NOAA has focused on the STCZ because it is an area triggering massive debris accumulation in Hawaii. This area does not have distinct boundaries and varies in location and intensity of convergence throughout the year. This zone moves seasonally between 30º and 42º N latitude (approximately 800 miles), extending farther south (28ºN) during periods of El Niño (Donohue and Foley, 2007).

The August 2009 expedition was so dauntingly successful and the findings were so"shocking", that "...Scripps' officials are now working to raise funds for a trip to the South Pacific gyre, sometime within the next two years", Haymet announced at a press conference last August. "That project's scope is far greater. While the North Pacific patch appeared as large as the Continental US, its South Pacific cousin is suspected to be about four times as large", roughly the size of all of Western and part Eastern Europe.

II: The Path To Successful Resolution

This unprecedented plastic waste tide appears as vast as the ocean, as ungraspable as the unfathomable mass of microscopic plastic fragments present at sea, transported by winds and currents, yet, ultimately, the plastic tide can become as limited as our chosen relationship with plastics, which involves a dramatic behavioral change on our part. The path to successful resolution of the crisis clearly appears...as we are the problem and the solution.

The Victims and The Aggressors

The despondent effects and too numerous casualties of the great plastic tide are visible, but more alarmingly, beyond visual, which ought to prompt the perpetrators to choose no other path than the advocacy and culture of consistent and sustained behavioral changes.

Creek in Manilla, Philippines, March 01 2009. Photo: Francis R. Malasig

The Victims

Animals

From the whale, sea lions, and birds to the microscopic organisms called zooplankton, plastic has been, and is, greatly affecting marine life, i.e animals on shore and off shore, whether by ingestion or entanglement.

In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, millions of birds and fishes.

The largest pieces of marine plastic debris, miles long discarded fishing nets and lines mostly, take an obvious toll on animals. These derelicts nets, called ghost nets, snare and drown thousands of larger sea creatures per year, such as seals, sea lions, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, dugons, crocodiles, seabirds, crabs, and other creatures. Acting as designed, these nets restrict movement causing starvation, laceration, infection, and, in animals that need to return to the surface to breathe, suffocation.

Entangled seal by derelict net, Hawaii. Photo Source: NOAA

On shores, researchers have also watched in horror as hungry turtles wolf down jellyfish-like plastic bags and seabirds mistake old lighters and toothbrushes for fish, choking when they try to regurgitate the plastic trash for their starving chicks.

Turtle eats plastic. Photo Source: Greenhouse Carbon Neutral Fdn

In the waters, plastic bags specifically, can be mistaken as food and consumed by a wide range of marine species, especially those that consume jellyfish or squid, which look similar when floating in the water column.

Albatross and others birds are choosing plastic pieces because of their similarity to their own food as well. Captain Moore and his Alguita team did see, above the GGP, albatrosses and tropicbirds circling above the line of trash. With little else to choose, they were obviously eating plastic. The birds seemed to be picking and choosing "the reds and pinks and browns. Anything that looks like shrimp," Moore says. Earlier in the trip, the Alguita had visited the French Frigate Shoals, off Hawaii, home to endangered monk seals and seabird rookeries. In the birds' gullets researchers found red plastic particles. Greenpeace reported that a staggering 80 percent of seabird populations observed worldwide have ingested plastics. Research into the stomach contents of dead Fulmars from the Netherlands, between 1982 and 2001, found that 96 percent of the birds had plastic fragments in their stomachs with an average of 23 plastic pieces per bird (Van Franeker and Meijboom, 2003).

Midway atoll, bird corpse. Photo: © Chris Jordan

When plastic ingestion occurs, it blocks the digestive tract, gets lodged in animals windpipes cutting airflow causing suffocation, or fills the stomach, resulting in malnutrition, starvation and potentially death. Indeed, it is found that debris often accumulates in the animals' gut and give a false sense of fullness, causing the animal to stop eating and slowly starve to death.

Midway atoll, bird corpse. Photo: © Chris Jordan

In April 2002 a dead Minke whale washed up on the Normandy coast in France. An investigation found that its stomach contained 800 kg of plastic bags (GECC, Groupe d'Etude des Cétacés du Cotentin, 2002).

In February 2004, a Cuviers Beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris) was found washed ashore on the west coast of the Isle of Mull, Scotland. Cuviers beaked whales are rarely seen in coastal waters, as they are predominantly a deep-water species. The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust took various skin and blubber samples and removed the stomach for further study by the Scottish Agricultural College. On initial removal it was found that the entrance to the stomach was completely blocked with a cylinder of tightly packed shredded black plastic bin liner bags and fishing twine. It is believed that this made it difficult for the animal to forage and feed effectively.

50 to 80 percent of sea turtles found dead are known to have ingested plastic marine debris.

The smaller the pieces of plastic get, the more dangerous they are to marine organisms. Fragmented plastic, specifically nurdles and small size mermaid tears, are found in the stomach of smaller sea creatures as well: fish, birds, marine mammal, reptile, jelly fish, select plastic pellets as they resemble fish eggs.

Whether the chemicals contained in the plastics are then desorbed to digestive fluids and transferred to tissues in quantities significant enough to harm the animals is subject to ongoing, yet still incomplete, research. However, as more and more studies on the matter are undergone, unpleasant findings are definitly uncovered.

What is proven, as we've seen supra, is that plastic does soak up pollutants, acting as toxic-sponge for man-made toxins present in the ocean, thus accumulating pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than in ocean water (Moore et al, 2001). PCBs can lead to reproductive disorders, death, an increased risk of disease, and an alteration of hormone levels (Ryan et al., 1988;Lee et al, 2001). They have been linked to the masculinisation of female polar bears and spontaneous abortions and declines in seal populations. In 1988, Ryan et al obtained evidence that PCBs in the tissues of Great Shearwaters were derived from ingested plastic particles (from Derraik, 2002). Furthermore, DDT, a pesticide that was banned in the US in the 1960's and labeled by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1987 as a "probable human carcinogen," has been found on these plastics fragments. The most recent review of all evidence concludes that exposure to DDT before puberty increases the risk of breast cancer.

Food Chain

In a September press conference, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei, said that assessments of the impact of plastic debris on phytoplankton, zooplankton, and mesopelagic (midwater) fishes are undergoing. The samples collected from the seawater will be subject to more scientific studies for the toxicity of the plastics and how this is really affecting our food chain (in ways that are only just becoming known... and not good ways).

Plastic found in Rainbow Runner fish guts. Photo Source: Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D said, "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes (...) giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future." Furthermore, as Saido added: "We are concerned that plastic pollution is also caused by these invisible materials and that it will harm marine life." While the potential toxicity of these tiny plastic constituents is still understudied for much of marine life, plastics are abundant in many forms. Plastics, including polystyrene, are common in the wads of accumulated, undigested matter that young black-footed albatrosses cough up before they fledge.

Whether plastics present a unanimously accepted and proven toxic challenge to marine life, and subsequently to humans, is one of the biggest challenges facing scientists right now.

Health

Saido's latest science report last summer about the decomposition of polystyrene plastics vests a simple reality: Bisphenol A (BPA) has been shown and proven to interfere with the reproductive systems of animals. PS oligomer and BPA from plastic decomposition are toxic and can be metabolized, while styrene monomer is a suspected carcinogen. Low levels of BPA and PS oligomer have been proven to cause hormone disruption in animals.

More scientific reports are being published on the effects of Bisphenol A on animal and human health, and the news is not good.

In 2009, a professional, international medical organization in the field of endocrinology and metabolism, The Endocrine Society, reported data from new research on animals experimentally treated with BPA. Studies presented at the group's annual meeting show BPA can affect the hearts of women, can permanently damage the DNA of mice, and appear to be entering the human body from a variety of unknown sources. A 2005 study, which analyzed BPA serum concentrations, concluded that "exposure to BPA is associated with recurrent miscarriage".

The first major study of health effects on humans associated with bisphenol A exposure was published in September 2008 by Iain Lang and colleagues in the Journal of American Association. The cross-sectional study of almost 1,500 people assessed exposure to bisphenol A by looking at levels of the chemical in urine. The authors found that higher bisphenol A levels were significantly associated with heart diseases, diabetes, and abnormally high levels of certain liver enzymes.

A 2008 scientific review concluded that "prenatal exposure to (...) low doses of BPA alters breast development and increases breast cancer risk". A 2009 scientific review, funded by the "Breast Cancer Fund", has recommended "a federal ban on the manufacture, distribution and sale of consumer products containing bisphenol A".

A 2009 study on urinary concentrations concluded that prenatal BPA exposure might be associated with externalizing behaviors in two-year old children, especially among female children.

A 2009 study on Chinese workers in BPA factories found that workers were four times more likely to report erectile dysfunction, reduced sexual desire, and overall dissatisfaction with their sex life than workers in factories that made products ranging from textiles to machinery, in which there was no heightened BPA exposure. They were also more likely to report reduced sexual function within one year of beginning employment at the factory, and the higher the exposure, the more likely they were to have sexual difficulties.

A 2009 review of available studies has concluded, "Prenatal BPA exposure acts to exert persistent effects on body weight and adiposity."

A 2009 scientific review about environmental chemicals and thyroid function concluded, "Available evidence suggests that governing agencies need to regulate the use of thyroid-disrupting chemicals, particularly as such uses relate exposures of pregnant women, neonates and small children to the agents". A 2009 review summarized BPA adverse effects on thyroid hormone action.

Kuta beach, Bali. Photo Source: Claude Graves

All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. Much of ocean's life is in the microscopic size range and zooplankton is the base of the food chain. As environmentalists remind the world's population, "...We are eating fish that have eaten other fish, which have eaten toxin-saturated plastics. In essence, humans are eating their own waste..." (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress)."

Beaches, Coast, Sea Floor, Shorelines

Blatantly visible is the plastic spill washing up on the shores and beaches. Just a walk on any beach, anywhere in the world, and plastic debris are found in one form or another. All over the world the statistics are ever growing, just staggeringly. Last year, an estimated 150,000 tons of marine plastic debris washed up onto the shores of Japan and 300 tons a day on India's shores.

Layson Island, Hawaiian islands. Photo Source: NOAA

The Hawaiian Archipelago, extending from the southernmost island of Hawaii 1,500 miles northwest to Kure Atoll, is among the longest and most remote island chains in the world. The 19 islands of the archipelago, including Midway atolls, receive massive quantities of plastic debris, shot out from the Pacific gyres. Some of the plastic litter is decades old. Some beaches are buried under 5 to 10 feet of plastic trash, while other beaches are riddled with "plastic sand," millions of grain-like pieces of plastic that are practically impossible to clean up. One of the reasons marine debris accumulates in these islands is the movement of debris within the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ), as we have explained supra.

Two studies on several islands off Jakarta Bay and islands further to the northwest in the Java Sea, reported that debris pollution on shorelines had substantially increased between 1985 and 1995 (Uneputty and Evans 1997b, Willoughby et al. 1997). Both studies noted that results implicated Jakarta as a major source of the debris. On 23 of the islands, it was reported that the total litter at the strandline ranged from not detectable to 29.1 items/m (Willoughby et al. 1997). Plastic bags, polystyrene blocks, and discarded footwear accounted for 80 percent of the items found.

Researchers Barnes and Milner (2005) list five studies which have shown increases in accumulation rates of debris on mid to high latitude coasts of the southern hemisphere.

Surveys of shorelines around the world, reported by Greenpeace, have recorded the quantity of marine debris either as the number of items per km of shoreline or the number of items per square meter of shoreline. The highest values reported were for Indonesia (up to 29.1 items per m) and Sicily (up to 231 items per m).

Seabed Pollution. Photo Source: Bouteilles à la mer org.

It's been reported by Greenpeace that an estimated 70 percent of the mass of fragmented plastic present in the open oceans of the world does sink to the deep-sea bed. A limited body of literature exists, though, concerning these small to microscopic particles (micro debris) mirroring the little research addressed to marine litter on the sea floor.

Ecosystem Changes

Another effect of the plastic tide that goes beyond visual is its potentiality to change entire ecosystems.

"Plastic is not just an aesthetic problem," says marine biologist David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey. "It can actually change entire ecosystems." He has documented that plastic debris which floats on the oceans, acts as rafts for small sea creatures to grow and travel on. This represents a potential threat for the marine environment should an alien species become established. It is postulated that the slow speed at which plastic debris crosses oceans makes it an ideal vehicle for this. The organisms have plenty of time to adapt to different water and climatic conditions.

Coral Reefs

Derelict fishing gear can be destructive to coral reefs. Corals are in fact animals, even though they may exhibit some of the characteristics of plants and are often mistaken for rocks. In scientific classification, corals fall under the phylum Cnidaria and the class Anthozoa. They are relatives of jellyfish and anemones. (NOAA)

Nets and lines become snagged on coral and subsequent wave action causes coral heads to break off at points where the debris was attached. Once freed, debris can again snag on more coral and the whole process is repeated. This cycle continues until the debris is removed or becomes weighted down with enough broken coral to sink (NOAA 2005a). Eventually, derelict fishing gear may become incorporated into the reef structure.

Plastic on Coral. Photo Source: EPA

Plastic bags can kill coral by covering and suffocating them, or by blocking sunlight needed by the coral to survive. During 2001, so many plastic bags were regularly seen in the Gulf of Aqaba, off the coast of Jordan, that the Board of Aqaba Special Economic Zone issued a law banning the production, distribution, and trade of plastic bags within the areas under their jurisdiction.

Economics

Marine litter cause serious economic losses to various sectors and authorities. Among the most seriously affected are coastal communities (increased expenditures for beach cleaning, public health and waste disposal), tourism (loss of income, bad publicity), shipping (costs associated with fouled propellers, damaged engines, litter removal and waste management in harbors), fishing (reduced and lost catch, damaged nets and other fishing gear, fouled propellers, contamination), fish farming and coastal agriculture.

Haina, Dominican Republic. Photo Source: Eduardo Munoz

In a 2007 Fortune Magazine article about India, it was written that the costs of river pollution to the economy are enormous. Waterborne diseases are India's leading cause of childhood mortality. Shreekant Gupta, a professor at the Delhi School of Economics who specializes in the environment, estimates that lost productivity from death and disease resulting from river pollution and other environmental damage is equivalent to about 4 percent of gross domestic product.

The bill for cleaning the beaches in Bohuslän, on the west coast of Sweden, in just one year was reportedly at least 10 million SEK or $1,550,200. In Britain, Shetland fishermen reported that 92 per cent of them had recurring problems with debris in nets, with each boat losing between $10,500 and $53,300 per year as a result of marine litter. The cost to the local industry could be as high as $4,300,000. The municipality of Ventanillas in Peru has calculated that it would have to invest around $400,000 a year in order to clean its coastline, while its annual budget for cleaning all public areas is only half that amount. (Unep)

Our Oceans and coastlines are under unprecedented plastics waste attack. It's coming back at us in many ways. It's a dire problem that only received serious scientific and public attention in the early 90's, as we know, but all along the perpetrators have simply and clearly been identified.

The Aggressors

The obvious and simple answer is: us...

Behind each and every piece of littered plastic debris there is a human face. At a critical decision point, someone, somewhere, mishandled it, either thoughtlessly or deliberately. Cigarette filters and cigar tips, fishing line, rope and gear, baby diapers and nappies, six-pack rings, beverage bottles and cans, disposable syringes, tires, the litany of plastic litter is as varied as the products available in the global marketplace, but it all shares a common origin.

Sources

260 million tons per year is our estimated plastic consumption, 6 789 billion, is the estimated world population (United States Census Bureau, as of October 2009). Our voracious appetite for plastics, coupled with a culture of discarding products that we have chosen for their inherent longevity, is a combination of lethal nature for our environment.

Plastic Sea. Photo Source: Coastal wiki

The ultimate symbol of our throwaway lifestyle is the plastic bag: 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags is the number consumed annually, which is about a million a minute. The production of plastic bags creates enough solid waste per year to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. The petroleum used to make only 14 plastic bags could drive a car 1 mile.

Plastic bags are commonly found in waterways, on beaches, and in other unofficial dumping sites across China, for instance. Litter caused by the notorious bags has been referred to as "white pollution."

In the United States, however, measures to ban or curtail the use of plastic bags have met with official resistance. With its powerful lobby, the plastics industry argues that jobs will disappear. The industry employs some two million workers. Americans alone throw out at least 100 billion bags a year, the equivalent of throwing away 12 million gallons of oil, which seems an intolerable waste. Until the U.S. follows the lead of San Francisco, China, Ireland, Uganda, South Africa, Russia, and Hong Kong and targets the reduction of plastic bags using legislature, we each need to make a conscious choice and refuse to use it.

The core of the plastic waste instillation in world's oceans is primarily rooted in poor practices of solid waste management, a lack of infrastructure, various human activities, an inadequate understanding on the part of the public of the potential consequences of their actions, the lack of adequate legal and enforcement systems nationally and internationally, and a lack of financial resources affected to the cause. Mainly a consensus needs to happen, as a culture of behavioral changes needs to be promoted.

The four main land-sources of plastics debris have been identified as:

Shoreline and recreational activities related litter

This includes: bags, balloons, beverages bottles, cans, caps, lids, shoes, cups, plates, forks, knives, spoons, food wrappers/containers, six-pack holders, pull tabs, shotgun shells/wadding, straws, stirrers, toys, medical hygiene (condom, syringe), drug and smoking paraphernalia (The filters are made of cellulose acetate, a synthetic polymer (fiber) that can last for many years in the environment), and 55 gallons drums. All this land-based debris blows, washes, or is discharged into the water from land areas after people engaged in beach-going activities have discarded it.

Branscombe, United Kingdom, Photo: Matt Cardy

About 80 percent of all tourist flock to coastal areas. Massive influxes of tourists, often to a relatively small area, have a huge impact, adding to the pollution of the local population, putting local infrastructure and habitats under enormous pressure. For example, 85 percent of the 1.8 million people who visit Australia's Great Barrier Reef are concentrated in two small areas, Cairns and the Whitsunday Islands, which together have a human population of just 130,000 or so, WWF reported.

Shoreline activities account for 58 percent of the marine litter in the Baltic Sea region and almost half in Japan and the Republic of Korea. In Jordan, recreational activities contribute up to 67 percent of the total discharge of marine litter. This is a particularly big problem in the East Asian Seas region - home to 1.8 billion people, 60 percent of whom live in coastal areas - with its fast growing shipping and industrial development. Other emerging hotspots include the oil-boom coasts of the Caspian and the littoral states of Iran and Azerbaijan.

In South Asia, the growing ship-breaking industry has become a major source of marine debris. In Gujarat, India - one of the largest and busiest ship-breaking yards in the world - operations are carried out on a 10-kilometer stretch on the beaches of Alang, generating peeled-off paint chips and other types of non-degradable solid waste making its way into the sea.

Sewage (waste waters containing plastic type products, rivers, waterways)

Under normal, dry weather conditions, most wastes are screened out of sewage in countries that do apply strict sewage treatment. However, materials can bypass treatment systems and enter waterways when rain levels exceed sewage treatment facilities' handling capacity. During these times, sewage overflows occur.

The Yamuna River, which flows 855 miles from the Himalayas into the Ganges, is one of India's most, but not only, polluted river. The Centre for Science and Environment says that nearly 80 percent of the river's pollution is the result of sewage. Combined with industrial runoff, that comes to more than three billion liters of waste per day, a quantity well beyond the river's assimilative capacity. Many Indian rivers are so polluted they exceed permissible levels for safe bathing.

Yamuna River in New Delhi. Photo: Manan Vastsyayana

It has been reported that the lack of adequate solid waste management facilities results in hazardous wastes entering the waters of the Western Indian Ocean, South Asian Seas, and southern Black Sea, among others.

Fishing related debris

Dumping, wastes from ships, boats platforms (20%). Derraik (2002) stated that ships are estimated to dump 6.5 million tons of plastic a year. An estimated fourth fifths of the oceanic debris is litter blown seaward from landfills and urban runoff washed down storm drains. (Unep). Clean up on land where 80 percent of the plastic debris originates is thus the primarily obvious answer.

Manual Clean Up

The simplest, yet highly effective, action is the manual clean up of the beaches, coasts, rivers, lands and estuaries.

National and international manual clean-up operations of shorelines and sea floor are in existence.

For instance, the past 20 years, the Japan Environmental Action Network (JEAN) has been organizing a yearly beach cleanup and survey.

On an international level, the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) was installed. The International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) engages the public to remove trash and debris from the world's beaches and waterways, to identify the sources of debris, and to change the behaviors that cause pollution. The origins of the ICC began in 1985 with research conducted by The Ocean Conservancy (then known as the Center for Marine Conservation - CMC) on plastics in the marine environment. Contracted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Toxic Substances, the CMC produced the report Plastics in the Ocean: More Than a Litter Problem, which was the first study to identify plastics as a significant marine debris hazard. The data collected and analyzed from the annual ICC Cleanup is used locally, nationally and internationally to influence policy decisions, spawn campaigns for recycling programs, support public education programs, launch adopt-a-beach programs, and even storm water system overhaul and legislative reform.

The Clean Up the World program is run in conjunction with UNEP. It engages more than 40 million people from 120 different countries in clean up operations.

Hawaiin shores. Photo Source: epa.gov

As part of its Rise Above Plastics campaign, Surfrider foundation is hosting frequent beach clean-ups; it is an example of an encouraging trend towards collective awareness and action to solve the problem at its source.

Worldwide private groups and associations are more and more aware that clean-up does need to happen, one day at a time, one person at a time.

Cleaning Up Of The Oceans Debris In The Open Seas

NOAA has also been contacted regarding cleanup of the debris directly in the garbage patch and other areas of the North Pacific; however, cleanup is likely to be more difficult than it may seem. "If only things were that simple. We could just go out there and scoop up an island," says Holly Bamford, director of NOAA's marine debris program. "If it was one big mass, it would make our jobs a whole lot easier." It's like a galaxy of garbage, populated by billions of smaller trash islands that may be hidden underwater or spread out over many miles.

Furthermore, in some areas where marine debris concentrates so does marine life, such as in the STCZ. This makes simple scooping up of the material risky, more harm than good may be caused. Straining ocean waters for plastics would capture the plankton that is the base of the marine food web and responsible for 50 percent of the photosynthesis on Earth. (NOAA).

As Captain Charles Moore once said: the cleaning up effort of the oceanic garbage patches "would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went."

However, confident in the future and investigating new horizons, Doug Woodring, from Project Kaisei, will be producing a documentary for National Geographic testing catch techniques for the plastic waste ("we know not all can be caught, but some can for sure"), at least for the largest debris that we know do decompose over time and actually more rapidly than previously thought.

Marine debris accumulation, on seafloor. Photo Source: NOAA

The clean up operation is the most immediate, highly effective, and simplest, action/plan that we, the problem, can undertake right now to contribute to the solution. It is a great starting point for a fundamental cultural change that need to occur, which is part of a major consensus.

The Consensus

Undeniably a culture of behavioural changes, now in its infancy, need to further blossom and be implemented/prompted at all levels: individual, associative, governmental, legislative, industrial, technological, educational, philosophical, national, and international.

It simply starts with individual choices. That is the enormous task, yet the enormous power as well because it resides within each and every one of us. Indeed, thanks to an increased awareness of the plastic pollution spread, local, national, individual, and associative actions have taken place worldwide to stop the plastic hemorrhage at the source.

Education, Legislation, and Awareness

Education

The starting point of all greater good does remain education and information.

More and more awareness and preventive programs are promoted.

For instance, in 2004, the Australian government launched a campaign called Keep the Sea Plastic Free, in which it attempted to educate the public to dispose of plastic waste properly.

Surfrider foundation is aiming to raise awareness of plastic marine debris and reduce the proliferation of single-use plastic bags and water bottles, as well as the number one littered item worldwide, cigarette butts. The Rise Above Plastics program also seeks to promote a more sustainable lifestyle and educate people about the prevalence of plastic marine debris on our beaches and oceans and how deadly it can be to marine life.

South East Asia - Philippines, 2008. Photo: Tamara Thoreson Pierce

The Indonesian government, for instance "(is) seriously concerned about improving its waste management and informing the public," quoted the Jakarta Post, 2008. The head of the Maritime and Coastal Resources Studies, Tridoyo Kusumastanto, said that both individual and industrial dumpers should learn from scavengers who take solid waste out instead of dumping it into rivers, canals and the sea. Tridoyo estimated that some 40 tons of waste have been dumped into rivers and other waterways daily in surrounding areas and thus polluting the Java Sea. A campaign against river and sea pollution has been called, and people are urged to change their culture of throwing garbage into waterways and other common places.

Being educated on the situation and aware of the consequences ultimately leads us toward better choices in term of consumption and waste management of plastic at an individual level. It can be as simple as refraining from discarding plastic after first use...plastic inherently chosen for its durability.

Mumbai Impressions... when the water retreats... Plastic Pollution. Captions and Photo source: ©© Don Domingo

As H. Takada mentioned: "We can't avoid using plastic, but we use too much. "In fact, he's added a fourth "R" to the ecologist's classic mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle: refuse. The current bring-your-own-bag movement at retail stores and supermarkets is a good start in terms of refusing, he notes.

Instantaneous, prompt eradication of plastics in its current form, rate of production, and consumption is not realistically feasible, yet constant pressure is impacting industry and politicians to "think green," to have environmentally responsible approach, production, prevention plans, and legislations.

Extend Producer Responsibility

Relentless associative campaigns have proven that change can happen, such as the recent victory from the Uk's Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) campaign against mermaid tears.

"SAS launched a campaign to rid British coastlines of mermaid tears, and will continue to build up until factory practice changes." On June 5th 2009, the release of the British Plastic Federation's (BPF) Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) guidance manual was a victory on the preventive field. OCS is aimed at improving British plastic factories efficient use of plastic pellets, commonly referred to as mermaid's tears. SAS initially highlighted the problem of mermaid's tears on UK beaches to the BPF in 2007, delivering a bottle of 10,000 mermaid's tears, collected from one Cornish beach, to a BPF biopolymer seminar. SAS also released a covert film documenting mermaid's tears in the storm drains of plastic factories in the southwest, highlighting the route from factory to beach. SAS and the BPF have worked together on the OCS solution. SAS has already signed up Contico, one of the southwest's largest plastic factories, to pilot some of the improvements within OCS.

Shoichiro Kobayashi, from The Japan Plastics Industry Federation, says that its members have taken measures to reduce spillage of plastics nurdles.

"Awareness of the problem is high," says Kobayashi, and has been since JEAN and other NPOs started publicizing the issue about 15 years ago. The federation has about 1,000 members. Together with the 2,200-member All Japan Plastic Products Industrial Foundation, the two groups represent the largest plastic producing companies in Japan. Kobayashi says his organization encourages members and associated transport companies to avoid spillage and to cover all drainage pipe openings with wire mesh. That's helped reduce the problem at larger companies, but there are more than 20,000 producers of plastic goods in Japan.

On September 22nd 2009 in California, a press conference was held by DTC director Maziar Movassaghi and Project Kaisei founder Mary Crowley, along with representatives from the State of California and various nonprofit groups. They pushed for Extended Producer Responsibility, the philosophy that companies that create products must take responsibility for the full life cycle of those products, products that are "benign by design." Mary Crowley added, "Let's reduce the source of this pollution by not only choosing healthy, plastic-free products ourselves, but also urging our legislators to pass Extended Producer Responsibility legislation. In fact, such a bill is currently on the table in the state of California. AB283, the California Product Stewardship Act, is an important step in this process."

Changzhi, Shanxi Province. Photo: Stringer Shanghai

Local legislations, with clear frames and enforcements measures, are increasingly being presented and passed in concert with international programs and legislations, which need ratification by as many countries as possible as the pollution is without frontiers.

Legislation And International Concerted Programs

Internationally

In 1972, the London Convention, a United Nations agreement to control ocean dumping, was entered into. It was followed by the most well known piece of International legislation, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from ships (MARPOL). Annex V of MARPOL was introduced in 1988 with the intention of banning the dumping of most garbage and all plastic materials from ships at sea. A total of 122 countries have ratified the treaty. There is some evidence that the implementation of MARPOL has helped to reduce the marine debris problem.

UK Beach. Photo Source: SWNS

In 1972 and 1974, conventions were held in Oslo and Paris, respectively, which resulted in the passing of the OSPAR Convention, an international treaty controlling marine pollution in the north-east Atlantic Ocean around Europe. A similar Barcelona Convention exists to protect the Mediterranean Sea. The Water Framework Directive of 2000 is a European Union directive committing EU member states to make their inland and coastal waters free from human influence. In the United Kingdom, the proposed Marine Bill is designed to "ensure clean healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, by putting in place better systems for delivering sustainable development of marine and coastal environment".

Under the umbrella of UNEP, numerous cooperative efforts have been held to reach protocols and conventions. For instance, a Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management was approved in January 2008, involving 21 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, as well as the European Union. Within the framework of Land Based Sources Protocol for pollution reduction from land-based sources, Mediterranean countries and parties to the Barcelona Convention have agreed this year on an initial set of actions covering the reduction of municipal pollution and the elimination of a number of Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) continues to encourage member states in meeting the Caribbean Challenge target of protecting 20 percent of marine and coastal habitats by 2020. The Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem Project and development of a Regional Fund for Wastewater Management will support regional collaboration to reduce the vulnerability of sensitive coastal and marine ecosystems by improving national and regional governance structures and developing new and innovative mechanisms for financing new pollution reduction activities.

Even though the greatest problem with international legislation is its actual enforcement, the efforts toward concerted actions can only be promoted.

Nationally

A strict Chinese limit on ultra-thin plastic bags significantly reduced bag-related pollution nationwide during the past year. "Our country consumes a huge amount of plastic shopping bags each year" a spokesperson for China's State Council said, when announcing the ban last May. "While plastic shopping bags provide convenience to consumers, this has caused a serious waste of energy and resources and environmental pollution because of excessive usage, inadequate recycling and other reasons." In January 2008, The State Council, China's parliament, passed legislation to prohibit shops and supermarkets from providing free plastic bags that are less than 0.025 millimeters thick. The State Administration of Industry and Commerce also threatened to fine shopkeepers and vendors as much as 10,000 Yuan ($1,465) if they were caught distributing free bags. The country avoided the use of 40 billion bags, according to government estimates. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) estimated that the limit in bag production saved China 1.6 million tons of petroleum.

The first country to ban plastic bags was Bangladesh, which did so in 2002. Following a particularly damaging typhoon, authorities discovered that millions of bags were clogging the country's system of flood drains, contributing to the destruction.

In the same year, Ireland took another approach and instituted a steep tax on plastics. According to the country's Ministry of Environment, use fell by 90 percent as a result and the tax money that was generated funded a greatly expanded recycling program throughout the country. In 2003, the government of Taiwan put in place a system by which bags were no longer made available in markets without charge. Carryout restaurants were even required to charge for plastic utensils.

Larger economies have joined the cause and passed legislations on a national level. In 2005, French legislators imposed a ban on all non-biodegradable plastic bags, which will go into effect in 2010. Italy will also ban them that year.

During its 2008 session, the New York State Legislature passed legislation requiring the reduction, reuse, and recycling of checkout bags. The previous year, the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags altogether, at least the flimsy ones of yore. National Public Radio reported a few months later that the ban had been a boom for local plastics manufacturers, who have been introducing heavy-duty, recyclable, and even compostable bags into the marketplace.

An impactful vehicle for information and awareness is indubitably found in the media and creative ventures.

A good example of such ventures is the team of two South African surfers, Ryan and Bryson Robertson, and one Canadian, Hugh Patterson, who created the OceanGybe mission. Their plan is to circumnavigate the globe in a small 40ft sailboat and surf remote reef breaks on far flung islands while interacting with the local cultures. They intend to spread awareness of the vast tracts of plastic and trash afloat on the world's oceans that inevitably ends up on some unsuspecting shore.

Fishing debris on beach. Photo Source: unknown

More publicized and funded is the environmentalist and Adventure Ecology founder David de Rothschild's expedition: the Plastiki mission.

The Plastiki, a one-of-a-kind 60-foot catamaran, was created out of 10,000 reclaimed plastic soda bottles, self-reinforced PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and recycled materials. The vessel's name is a nod to famed explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who led a 1947 voyage on the Kon-Tiki to test theories of Polynesian settlement by South Americans. The Plastiki is about to make its momentous voyage across the Pacific Ocean, a 10,000-mile expedition from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia by the end of this year, to inspire people to rethink current uses and waste of plastic as a resource and bring attention to the GGP.

De Rothschild explained that Plastiki's construction has already jump-started research into a future "smart plastics" industry before ever leaving port. For instance, studies are underway on glues that could someday replace common marine epoxies and plastics that could replace non-recyclable fiberglass.
"The Plastiki voyage will be a great adventure, but I think more exciting is the ability to create a conversation on the issue of plastics."

Philosophy

Adventures of philosophical nature have been taking place as well.

Indeed, French thinkers such as Michel Serre or Luc Ferry, The new ecological order, have developed a train of thought aiming towards a legal recognition, therefore legal protection of Nature. This type of philosophy has been called, deep ecology. The principle is quite simple: democracies have installed their legislative framework, their "social contract," omitting Nature as a protagonist/subject of law. Therefore, to protect Nature, i.e. our environment, should we confer legal right to it, thus making nature a legal subject/person?

Obviously, all subject of law have rights, but they also have obligations. If we can easily forsee what the right and protection would be for this legal subject, what would be its obligations?

This leads many thinkers towards a notion of "droit ou devoir d'ingerence ecologique" (right or duty of intervention/assistance), trying to mirror the situation on the humanitarian field. The notions of "self defense" and "non assistance a personne en danger" have also been explored as possible legal frames to better enforcement of laws and conventions aimed to protect the environment, and curb ocean plastic pollution for that matter.

Sustainable And Future Technologies - Opportunities and Innovations

Biodegradable plastics

Biodegradable plastics have been considered as a future, sustainable option to curb our voracious demand and consumption of plastic material as known in its current form. According to the Biodegradable Plastics Society (2005), when such plastics are composted they break down to carbon dioxide and water.

Controversy does exist though, because it is possible that biodegradable plastics do not break down fully, especially under environmental conditions which are not ideal for composting, and leave non-degradable constituents, some of which may be equally, if not more, hazardous. Also, there is a danger that biodegradable plastics will be seen as "litter friendly" materials, conveying the wrong message to the public and potentially leading to less responsible and more wasteful practices.

A change in behavioral propensities to over-consume plastics, discard and thus pollute, need to be promoted to the fullest.

Ongoing discoveries and solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem

Scientists have been searching for solutions to the traditional plastic waste problem.

In 2008 and 2009, two high school students who discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms, might have found groundbreaking solutions.

African coast, plastic pollution and marine debris. Photo: Candace Feit

The first was Daniel Burd (2008). The second was Tseng I-Ching(l May 2009), a high school student in Taiwan.

Daniel's simple and clever process was to immerse ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, then isolating the most productive organisms. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures, Burd was achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment. It appeared as an environmentalist's dream: a non-chemical, i.e. fully organic, low cost and nontoxic method for degrading plastic.

There have been several successful bacteria based solutions developed at the Dept. of Biotechnology in Tottori, Japan, as well as at the Dept. of Microbiology at the National University of Ireland, but both apply only to styrene compounds.

Similarly, a 2004 study at the University of Wisconsin isolated a fungus capable of biodegrading phenol-formaldehyde polymers previously thought to be non-biodegradable.

Green chemistry and "begnign by design" concept

A growing interest amongst chemists, and ultimately industries, is Green chemistry- policy, also called "benign by design".

According to scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), a new type of environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may be developed. Robson F. Storey, Ph.D., a professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at USM, said, "We're moving toward making plastics more sustainable, especially those that are used at sea." Their study is funded by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which is supporting a number of ongoing research projects aimed at reducing the environmental impact of marine waste. The new plastics are made of polyurethane that has been modified by the incorporation of PLGA [poly (lactide-co-glycolide)], a known degradable polymer used in surgical sutures and controlled drug-delivery applications. When exposed to seawater, the plastics degrade via hydrolysis into nontoxic products, according to the scientists. The plastics are not quite ready for commercialization. "More studies are needed to optimize the plastics for various environmental conditions they might encounter, including changes in temperature, humidity and seawater composition", Storey says.

A new kind of material, called oxo-biodegradable plastic, does not just fragment, but is consumed by microorganisms after the additive has reduced the molecular weight. It is thus biodegradable. This process continues until the material has biodegraded to nothing more than CO2, water, humus, and trace elements. There is little or no additional cost, as it can be made with the same machinery and workforce as conventional plastic. The time taken to degrade can be programmed to a few months or a few years and, until the plastic degrades, it has the same strength and other characteristics as conventional plastic. Oxo-biodegradable plastic will be engineered to degrade in a short time leaving no harmful residues.

Recycling and Zero Waste concept

A promising way toward a future of better plastic waste management is recycling the material. The recycling industry might eventually be a path leading to considerable opportunities and solutions.

The BIR (Bureau of International Recycling), whose headquarters is in Belgium, is a trade federation representing the world's recycling industry. About 800 companies and national federations from over 70 countries are affiliated with the BIR. Together they provide their expertise to other industrial sectors and political groups in order to promote recycling. It is estimated that the recycling industry employs more than 1.5 million people, annually processes over 500 million tons of commodities, and has a turnover exceeding $160 billion.

However, this industry is faced with many challenges, as the recycling material itself is very diverse in a chemical sense and can release, when processed, extremely dangerous chemicals. For instance, a recycling factory in China was recently exposed to tragic consequences due to the recycling of very hazardous plastic materials. It was reported that a team of workers in China's Zhejiang province collapsed after handling two metric tons of plastic scrap on September 13, 2009. At least 21 have since been hospitalized and three of them have died. According to the initial investigative conclusions, the victims were in contact with highly toxic chemical, dinitrophenol, which was found on the two tons of plastic scrap. Workers at the recycling factory were unaware of the hazard of the material and had no protection during the unloading. This particular tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. China's plastics recycling industry is poorly regulated, with scandals such as biohazard plastic waste being melted and reprocessed into consumer goods.

Recycling is definitely a potentially great path to solving the plastic waste problem but definitely not the most unchallenging one.

Along the same lines, a responsible waste strategy, namely the concept of Zero Waste, has been widespread. Such a strategy encompasses waste reduction, reuse and recycling as well as producer responsibility and ecodesign. According to a Greenpeace report, strategies to achieve Zero Waste are adopted throughout the world, in industrialized countries and in less developed countries.

Ultimately, this would mean reduction of the use of plastics. "Our understanding of disposal and reuse (of plastic, is what) is to blame." as many environmentalist such as de Rothschild, said.

This zero waste philosophy encourages the redesign of resource's life cycles, so that all products are reused. Any trash sent to landfills is minimal. The process recommended is one similar to the way that resources are reused in nature. Zero waste can represent an economical alternative to waste systems, where new resources are continually required to replenish wasted raw materials.

DTSC's Environmental Chemistry Laboratory is currently analyzing some of the plastic marine debris collected at the Great Garbage Patch by Project Kaisei scientists, and explores the potential of converting the plastic collected into new material.

Indeed, Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei stated last September that they intend to use some of the newest plastic technologies to detoxify and turn the plastic waste caught in the oceans either into fuel or another useable material. Thus, Project Kaisei hopes to assign value to that plastic collected, particularly the overwhelming majority that is never recycled. It becomes obvious that technologies that convert plastic to fuel, clothing, or simply more profitable plastic could give people a good reason to pick up all that plastic and make a profit from it. Numerous industries, such as fashion, are already increasingly focusing on new green materials as a base for their offered products, encouraging a way of life and cultural change toward better choices and awareness of the environment.

"It's controllable," DougWoodring said. "We have to let people know that enough is enough, but it's not just a negative story about toxicity and wrecking our oceans. There is a huge amount of opportunity for innovation."

Conclusion

"The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed."
-Commandant Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

The abysmal depth and extent of the task before us ought to be never as inexhaustible and boundless as our dedication and compelling strive to greater changes.

Plastic pollution. Photograph: © SAF - Coastal Care
Note: This article was first written and published in November 2009, and last updated in September 2019.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Claire Le Guern Last updated in November 2019. The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/oceans/critical-issues-marine-pollution

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/various-ocean-pollution-facts.php

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The ocean remains one of the most expansive, mysterious and diverse places on Earth. Unfortunately, it is being threatened by pollution from people on land and natural causes. Marine life is dying, and as a result, the whole oceanic ecosystem is threatened simply by various sources of pollution. If we are to preserve the ocean and its natural beauty, drastic measures have to be taken to combat this pollution and keep what we hold most dear.

Before, it was assumed that because the ocean was so big, vast and deep, that the effects of dumping trash and litter into the sea would only have minimal consequences. But as we have seen, this has proven not to be the case. While all five oceans have suffered as a result of human consequence for over millennia by now, it has accelerated in the past few decades. Oil spills, toxic wastes, floating plastic and various other factors have all contributed to the pollution of the ocean.

Wikipedia defines ocean pollution as,

" Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Most sources of marine pollution are land-based. The pollution often comes from nonpoint sources such as agricultural runoff, wind-blown debris and dust."

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

~ Jacques Cousteau

"Did you know that approximately 1.4 billion pounds of trash per year enter the ocean?" Source: NOAA

35 Surprising Facts About Ocean Pollution

Simply put, the ocean cannot continue to thrive as a dumpsite for people. While the state of the ocean's pollution may not come as any sort of surprise to many people, the following cold hard facts might:

Fact 1: Plastic is the most common element that is found in the ocean. It is harmful to the environment as it does not get break down easily and is often mistaken as food by marine animals.

Fact 2: At least 8 million tons of plastic enter the oceans each year. That's similar to emptying a garbage truck of plastic into an ocean every minute.

Fact 3: Plastic pollution is one of the most serious threats to the ocean. Plastic does not degrade; instead, it breaks down into progressively smaller pieces, known as microplastic (smaller than 5 mm) by sun exposure and wave action. Then it can find its way into the food chain but never disappears.

Plastic debris can absorb toxic chemicals from ocean pollution, therefore poisoning whatever eats it. It poses a significant health threat to the various sea creatures and the entire marine ecosystem.

Fact 4: There is more microplastic in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way.

Fact 5: Over 100,000 marine animals die every year from plastic entanglement and ingestion. More than 50 percent of sea turtles have consumed plastic.

Fact 6: There's so much junk at sea that the debris has formed giant garbage patches. The term "garbage patch" is a large area actually made up of debris ranging in size, from microplastics to large bundles of derelict fishing gear and other marine debris collects.

These patches are formed by large, rotating ocean currents called gyres that pull debris into one location, often to the gyre's center. The debris forming garbage patches can be found from the surface of the ocean all the way to the ocean floor.

Fact 7: There are five gyres in the ocean, one in the Indian Ocean, two in the Atlantic Ocean, and two in the Pacific Ocean. The largest is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Fact 8: There is an island of garbage twice the size of Texas inside the Pacific Ocean: the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California includes an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash. There, the number of floating plastic pieces outnumbers total marine life by six to one in the immediate vicinity.

Fact 9: In fact, plastic is the number one source of pollution in the ocean. When plastic eventually degrades, which is around 400 years for most plastic, the process releases chemicals that further contaminate the sea.

Fact 10: Plastic in the ocean comes from China and Indonesia more than anywhere else, and they account for one-third of plastic pollution. In fact, 80% of plastic pollution comes from just 20 countries, including the United States.

Fact 11: The biggest source of pollution in the ocean is directly from land-based sources, such as oil, dirt, septic tanks, farms, ranches, motor vehicles, among larger sources. Thousands of tons of waste and trash are dumped into the ocean on a daily basis.

Fact 12: Over one million seabirds are killed by ocean pollution each year. Three hundred thousand dolphins and porpoises die each year as a result of becoming entangled in discarded fishing nets, among other items. One hundred thousand sea mammals are killed in the ocean by pollution each year.

Fact 13: Even though mostly the trash and waste dumped into the ocean is released hundreds of miles away from land, it still washes up on beaches and coastal areas, and affects everything in between. Every marine animal is affected by man-made chemicals released in the water.

Fact 14: Oil is the fastest source of deterioration to the ocean, being far more harmful than trash and waste. However, only a small percentage of oil (around 12%) dumped in the ocean comes as a result of actual oil spills. Most oil causing harm in the ocean is a result of drainage from the land.

Fact 15: Oil spills suffocate marine life to death, and leads to behavioral changes and a breakdown in thermal insulation to those that do survive. It essentially changes the entire ecosystem of an affected area, such as a long coastline or deep ocean.

Fact 16: Toxic metals can destroy biochemistry, behavior, reproduction, and growth in marine life.

Fact 17: Microfibers also cause much pollution. With each load of laundry, more than 700,000 synthetic microfibers are washed into our waterways. Unlike natural materials such as cotton or wool, these synthetic microfibers make up as much as 85 percent of all beach trash that do not break down.

Fact 18: Not all sources of contamination in the ocean come from just oil, trash and solid wastes. The dumping of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors, industrial race (such as heavy metals and acids), and drained sewage are also heavy contributors to pollution.

Fact 19: Littering causes pollution in the ocean, which also causes a substantial loss of life beneath the seas. The truth is that billions of tons of litter end up in the ocean each year, and it is substantially more than the 250 million tons of trash generated. This has led to a gradual loss in marine life and an increase in the number of endangered species.

Fact 20: There is also much noise in the ocean. Noise pollution created by shipping and military activity can cause cellular damage to a class of invertebrates that includes jellyfish and anemones. These animals are a major food source for tuna, sharks, sea turtles and other creatures.

Fact 21: Sewage leads to the decomposition of organic matter that, in turn, leads to a change in biodiversity. Even if the ocean's ecosystem isn't destroyed entirely, it is still changed drastically, and often not for the better.

Fact 22: Fertilizer runoff creates eutrophication that flourishes algal bloom in aquatic systems. Harmful algal blooms (HABs), also known as " red tides," grow rapidly and produce toxic effects that can affect marine life and sometimes even humans, which depletes the oxygen content in the water that affects marine life.

Fact 23: In several parts of the world, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea, Eutrophication has created enormous dead zones that can result in mass die-offs of fish and other marine life, making those zones impossible for marine or plant life.

Fact 24: The dead zones are growing in number. In 2004, scientists counted 146 hypoxia or dead zones, areas of such low oxygen concentration that animal life suffocates and dies, in the world's oceans. By 2008, that number increased to 405. In 2017, in the Gulf of Mexico, oceanographers detected the largest dead zone ever measured, nearly the size of New Jersey.

Fact 25: Small animals at the bottom of the food chain absorb the chemicals as part of their food. These small animals are then eaten by larger animals that again increase the concentration of chemicals. Animals at the top of the hierarchy of the food chain have contamination levels millions of times higher than the water in which they live.

Fact 26: People get contaminated easily by eating contaminated seafood that can cause serious health problems, from cancer to damage to the immune system.

Fact 27: The ocean pollution is more common in waters more than 2,000 feet deep, with the most common plastic bags, metal cans, fishing equipment, glass bottles, shoes, tires, etc.

Fact 28: The garbage like plastic bottles, aluminum cans, shoes, packaging material - if not disposed of correctly, can reach the sea, and the same garbage can again reach the seashore where it pollutes beaches and affects the local tourism industry.

Fact 29: Salty water of the ocean has the capability to move pollutants from the ocean to coastal freshwater, making wells and groundwater contaminated.

Fact 30: Chemicals from industries and mines can also enter the ocean through land-based activities. They can seep through soil, water or land either during their manufacture, use or accidental leaks. From soil, water or land, they can enter into ocean currents and can travel longer distances.

Fact 31: As 70% of the earth is covered with water, people actually assumed that all pollutants would be diluted and get disappeared. But in reality, they have not disappeared, and their effects can be easily seen as they have entered the food chain.

Fact 32: Until the 1970s, the chemicals and garbage were deliberately dumped into the oceans and became common practice for disposing of everything, including pesticides and radioactive waste, assuming that it would get dissolved to safe levels.

Fact 33: Till today, in many parts of the world, sewage water is discharged in the ocean - untreated or under-treated. This can have a serious effect on marine and human life and can also lead to eutrophication.

Fact 34: We cannot see ocean pollution because most ocean trash sits on the bottom, and it may be worse. Almost 70 percent of ocean garbage actually sinks to the seafloor for which we're unlikely ever to be able to clean it up.

Fact 35: One effect of greenhouse emissions is increased ocean acidification, which makes the oceans lose mussel mass. It is becoming more difficult for bivalves such as mussels, clams and oysters to form shells, decreasing their likelihood of survival, upsetting the food chain and affecting the shellfish industry of multibillion-dollar.
References: National Geographic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
35 Surprising Facts About Ocean Pollution That Might Scare You - Conserve Energy Future

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ocean remains one of the most expansive, mysterious and diverse places on Earth. Unfortunately, it is being threatened by pollution from people on land and natural causes. Marine life is dying, and as a result, the whole oceanic ecosystem is threatened simply by various sources of pollution.

# data[].attributes.headline
Corals May Have a Taste for Dangerous Plastic- Naa Yemoley Yemofio

# data[].attributes.subject
Corals May Have a Taste for Dangerous Plastic- Naa Yemoley Yemofio

# data[].attributes.body
Plastic bags has been found in the guts of dead sea turtals More than 200 speices has been documented eating plastic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The ocean is full of plastic. Eight million tons are dumped in the seas every year. Plastic bags have been found in the guts of dead sea turtles, which mistake them for jellyfish. More than 200 species have been documented eating plastic, which looks colorful and edible but can kill them.

In lab experiments, even tiny corals, the organisms that make up reefs, have been observed nibbling on a confetti of broken down plastic fragments similar to what swirls through the depths. But they aren't just eating whatever floats by. Instead, according to a new study in Marine Pollution Bulletin, some of the chemicals infused in the plastic may actually taste like food to the corals.

It isn't yet clear how much plastic is consumed by corals in the wild, or what harm it might do to these important marine organisms, which are already threatened by environmental dangers like warming seas and pollution. But understanding why plastic might appeal to them is important, especially because some particles appear to get stuck in the corals, potentially disrupting their digestive process.

Hundreds of chemicals are mixed into plastics to achieve certain textures or other characteristics. Because the corals sense the presence of food with receptors, it would not be all that surprising if some chemical additives mimicked substances that set off the corals' appetites, suggested Alexander Seymour and Austin Allen, who were both graduate students at Duke University when they led this study.

In their experiment, the researchers offered corals collected from North Carolina's coastal waters two different kinds of plastic to see what would be more popular: plastic dipped in seawater and covered with a thin layer of bacteria, or weathered plastic without added bacteria. The corals seemed to prefer the bacteria-free plastic, ingesting more of it than the other shards.

The difference between the consumption of the two plastics could come down to the concentrations of additive chemicals. Perhaps the microbes on the first set of plastic kept those added compounds from reaching the corals as swiftly. Or maybe the microbes produced substances that kept the corals from eating them as quickly.

Daniel Rittschof, the pair's adviser, and other members of the lab are now working to verify whether specific substances in plastic are tasty to marine invertebrates. Finding out what these are and how they work could have far-reaching implications.

"If we could manufacture plastic to taste attractive, maybe we can manufacture plastic to taste repulsive," Mr. Seymour said. "Maybe we can prevent critters from eating plastic in the first place."

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated a type of plastic used in an experiment. The plastic was weathered and not dipped in bacteria, it was not fresh from the factory.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Corals May Have a Taste for Dangerous Plastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The ocean is full of plastic. Eight million tons are dumped in the seas every year. Plastic bags have been found in the guts of dead sea turtles, which mistake them for jellyfish. More than 200 species have been documented eating plastic, which looks colorful and edible but can kill them.

# data[].attributes.body
_Rylan

# data[].attributes.body
fishing gear and an engine cover are just some of the startling contents found inside the stomachs of sperm whales that recently beached themselves on Germany’s North Sea coast.

The 13 sperm whales washed up near the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
if those whales at all that in their stomachs, imagine whats in a small fish? one that you could very well be eating.

# data[].attributes.body
They filter pollutants and sediments. It decreases the effects of the flooding and storm surges. They must feature the mixing of fresh and salt water to be a true estuary. Fish species spend some part of their life cycles in estuaries. Estuaries excess nutrients that are removed in bordering salt marshes. The protected environment and abundant food provide an ideal location for fish and shellfish to reproduce.

# data[].attributes.headline
There are over 5.25 Trillion Pieces of trash in the ocean

# data[].attributes.subject
There are over 5.25 Trillion Pieces of trash in the ocean

# data[].attributes.body
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150109-oceans-plastic-sea-trash-science-marine-debris/
Doran Coley

# data[].attributes.headline
Plastic pollution in the ocean is reaching crisis levels : Amiliyon Chavis

# data[].attributes.subject
Plastic pollution in the ocean is reaching crisis levels : Amiliyon Chavis

# data[].attributes.body
There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic trash in the world’s oceans, and each year, 8 million tons of plastic are added to the count. That’s equivalent to one municipal garbage truck pulling up to the beach and dumping its contents every minute. Though the oceans seem vast enough to stomach a lot of plastic, the level of waste is starting to reach a crisis point

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ocean Plastic Pollution is Reaching Crisis Levels

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plastic pollution in the ocean has reached crisis levels and must be addressed in Asia, where most pollution occurs, a report found.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.body
The Great Pacific garbage patch, also described as the Pacific trash vortex, is a gyre of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean discovered between 1985 and 1988. It is located roughly between 135°W to 155°W and 35°N and 42°N.[1] The patch extends over an indeterminate area of widely varying range depending on the degree of plastic concentration used to define the affected area.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
“Trash Island” redirects here. For the Drain Gang album, see Trash Island (album). For other marine gyres in the world’s oceans, see Garbage patch.

# data[].attributes.body
pollution is very high now especially with pharmaceuticals and chemical waste being dumped into the ocean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.body
Oceans are being polluted with many solid wastes from humans
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/oceans/critical-issues-marine-pollution/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.headline
ocean pollution-melany garcia  pollution has been a problem in the us

# data[].attributes.subject
ocean pollution-melany garcia  pollution has been a problem in the us

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/world/plastic-plague-oceans/index.html
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become the stuff of legend. This hotspot of marine waste, created by the spiral currents of the North Pacific Gyre, has been described as a floating trash island the size of Russia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Story highlights

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become the stuff of legend. This hotspot of marine waste, created by the spiral currents of the North Pacific Gyre, has been described as a floating trash island the size of Russia.

But when filmmaker Jo Ruxton visited the location, she found clear blue water, and a deep-rooted problem.

"If you were diving, it looked like you had just jumped out of a plane," says Ruxton. "But our nets were coming up completely choked with plastic pieces."

The pieces were small enough to mingle with plankton, the tiny organisms at the base of the food web that support many fish and whale species. Researchers have found 750,000 microplastic pieces per square kilometer in the Garbage Patch, and the marine life is riddled with them.

"This was much more insidious than a huge mountain of trash which could be physically removed," says Ruxton. "You can't remove all the tiny pieces."

Rising tide

Ruxton visited the site while producing the film "A Plastic Ocean," in association with NGO Plastic Oceans, which documents the impact of half a century of rampant plastic pollution.

Around eight million tons of plastic enter the marine environment each year, and the figure is set to rise. The Ellen Macarthur Foundation estimates that 311 million tons of plastic were produced in 2014, which will double within 20 years, and projects that there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.

Plastic is a remarkably durable material, with a potential lifespan of centuries. It does not biodegrade, but photodegrades under sunlight, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces, which attract toxins and heavy metals as they travel on the tides. Plastic is pulled together in the powerful, circling currents of gyres, but it is also found in Arctic ice, washing up on remote islands, and infesting tourist destinations.

Ruxton's crew visited dozens of locations without escaping the plastic plague. They found it covering the Mediterranean Sea bed, the shorelines of Bermuda, and Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea, a World Heritage site that has been severely affected.

"We kept coming across dead chicks," Ruxton recalls of Howe Island. "We opened 10 of their stomachs which were so full of plastic they were swollen ... These birds were dying of starvation with their stomachs bulging full."

But the most disturbing find was on the South Pacific island of Tuvalu.

Health impact

Tuvalu was once a pristine beauty spot. But the island lacks the infrastructure to dispose of the plastic it imports, which has become a serious hazard for the local population.

"People were just throwing plastic outside," says Ruxton. "They were drowning in the stuff, and trying to burn it. There was a constant pall of black smoke, and people were always exposed to the gases that come out when you burn plastic, including two very scary ones that have been linked to cancer, dioxins and furans."

From a group of 30 islanders featured in the film, five had cancer and two have died in the last 18 months, Ruxton says. She is raising funds to research the health impact of burning plastic.

The team is also studying the effects of ingesting seaborne plastic through a partnership with toxicology specialists at London's Brunel University. Studies have shown a quarter of food fish sold at markets in California and Indonesia contain plastic, and although this has not yet resulted in public health warnings, tests have shown ingestion can cause tumors in lab animals.

Californian oceanographer Captain Charles J. Moore, who first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and studies the impact of seaborne plastic, feels the "jury is still out" on the effects of ingestion on human health. But he believes our exposure is rapidly increasing, particularly through the spread of microplastics.

"Plastic is in the air we breathe, it's become part of the soil and the animal kingdom," says Moore. "We're becoming plastic people."

Counting the cost

Moore believes we do not fully comprehend the damage caused by plastic pollution, largely as the gyres where it collects have been ignored.

"The gyres are 40% of the world ocean - one third of the planet," says Moore. "But these areas are not part of any exclusive economic zone, they are not used for the shipment of goods, they are not harvested for marine resources, and their welfare is no one's concern ... I'm convinced we haven't scraped the surface of the damage being done."

From his own research, the volume of plastic has tripled in the gyres since the turn of the century, and plastic is disproportionately consumed by fish at the bottom of food chains, leading to rapid and deadly proliferation.

"It is impossible to quantify death in the ocean as weak and dying creatures are so rapidly consumed," says Moore. He believes U.N. estimates that plastic kills around one million sea creatures a year far understate the impact.

The U.N.'s Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Protection (GESAMP) has conducted several recent studies of plastic pollution and found far-reaching effects.

"If we don't do anything, we will see certain species disappear," says GESAMP Chairman Peter Kershaw, citing the toll of entanglement and ingestion on endangered seals and whales. "In wider ecosystems, (plastic) certainly has an impact on sensitive habitats, including coral reefs."

Kershaw also highlights the economic impact. Plastic causes $13 billion of damage to the marine environment each year according the UN, which affects the fishing, shipping and tourism industries.

Getting a grip

The issue of plastic pollution has gained traction over the past decade, which has seen research increase, and the launch of major initiatives such as the Global Partnership on Marine Litter, bringing together policymakers, conservationists and business interests to pursue solutions.

Kershaw believes the key is to end the culture of disposable plastic, and implement closed loop systems for the material to be reused, which would reduce the demand for new production. Around 80% of plastic waste in the oceans originates on land, and recycling rates are poor, with just 9% of plastic in the U.S. recycled, according to the EPA.

"We're suffering from a linear approach," he says. "We need to design waste out of the system."

Kershaw adds that incentive schemes have proved effective. Charging consumer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
waste management and remediation services

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The plastic plague: Can our oceans be saved from environmental ruin? | CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become the stuff of legend. This hotspot of marine waste, created by the spiral currents of the North Pacific Gyre, has been described as a floating trash island the size of Russia. But when filmmaker Jo Ruxton visited the location, she found clear blue water, and a deep-rooted problem.

# data[].attributes.body
Choking the Oceans With Plastic - The New York Times

The problem in my article was plastic ending up in the ocean . the solution could be ban plastic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | Choking the Oceans With Plastic (Published 2014)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is growing — and there is really only one way to make it shrink.

# data[].attributes.body
fertilizers, plastic, sewage, and more... WE NEED TO STOP THIS MADNESS!!!!!!
- Griffin (the memer from discord) [ discord name: Griffindale #7748]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

# data[].attributes.body
ahamed obrahim

# data[].attributes.headline
Ocean Pollution,Dynasty Boyd,Angelica Cuebas                        ocean Pollution is a major problem in the us today but thanks to estuaries it helps decrease the amount of poollutants.  http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution          

# data[].attributes.subject
Ocean Pollution,Dynasty Boyd,Angelica Cuebas                        ocean Pollution is a major problem in the us today but thanks to estuaries it helps decrease the amount of poollutants.  http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution          

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean.

# data[].attributes.body
Most of the point source pollution comes from oil and/or chemical spill. Most non-point source pollution comes from vehicle.
http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution

# data[].attributes.headline
Ocean Pollution-Johnathan Cortes         http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution

# data[].attributes.subject
Ocean Pollution-Johnathan Cortes         http://www.noaa.gov/resource-collections/ocean-pollution

# data[].attributes.body
Where all the pollution and waste goes into

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean.

# data[].attributes.headline
death of manatees dolphins and pelicans point to estuary at risk/Daniel Espitia 

# data[].attributes.subject
death of manatees dolphins and pelicans point to estuary at risk/Daniel Espitia 

# data[].attributes.body
a lot of ocean animals are dying for no reason people are investigating what is happening to them
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/us/deaths-of-manatees-dolphins-and-pelicans-point-to-estuary-at-risk.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mr. Rice's fear, widely shared, is that an ecosystem that supports more than 4,300 species of wildlife - and commercial fisheries, tourism and other businesses generating nearly $4 billion annually - is buckling under the strain of decades of pollution generated by coastal Florida's explosive development.

The evidence of decline is compelling. In 2011 and 2012, unprecedented blooms of algae blanketed the estuary's northern reaches for months, killing vast fields of underwater sea grass that are the building blocks of the estuary ecosystem. The grasses are breeding grounds for fish, cover from predators, home to countless creatures at the bottom of the food chain and, not least of all, the favorite menu item of manatees.

The sea grass has largely been supplanted by macroalgae, fast-growing seaweeds that clump into huge mats that drift free in the waters. And the character of the estuary is changing: already, algae-eating fish like menhaden are significantly increasing, Mr. Rice said.

Leesa Souto, a conservation biologist who heads the Marine Resources Council, a nonprofit group devoted to protecting the estuary, quoted one expert as saying that the loss of grasses destroyed the habitat for 1.4 billion immature fish.

"We fear the fishery collapse may be forthcoming as these missing juveniles will never reach adulthood two or three years from now," she wrote in an e-mail.

The scope and suddenness of the algae blooms took scientists by surprise, but their source is no secret: off Brevard County, the estuary is badly overloaded with nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient found in fertilizers, rotting organic matter and human and animal waste.

State and federal authorities long ago limited dumping of nitrogen-rich effluents from sewage-treatment plants and factories. But so-called nonpoint sources of pollution, like lawn fertilizer and septic tanks, have been far harder to control.

Now, some experts say, the rapid urbanization of the Florida coast, from the boom years of the space age to the later growth of retirement condos, appears to have pushed the accumulation of those wastes.

Brevard has grown explosively, to nearly 545,000 in the 2010 census, from 23,700 people in 1950. The Banana River and other fingers of the estuary are a bricolage of pristine nature reserves cheek-to-jowl with beachfront motels, tract homes fronting on canals, even a golf course in the center of the Banana River itself.

Surveys in 2011 and 2012 by the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University concluded that estuary waters off Brevard contained 45 percent more nitrogen than is acceptable, and three times as much as in the estuary's southern waters, said Brian Lapointe, a research professor at the institute.

Where the nitrogen came from is unclear. Relying on analyses of nitrogen isotopes in algae collected from the estuary, Dr. Lapointe concluded that most came from sewage - most likely from the 100,000 or so septic tanks that he estimated were dug during Brevard's rapid expansion.

But a comprehensive search for the origins of the nitrogen has yet to be conducted. A handful of studies in waters outside the estuary have indicated that fertilizer runoff can be a major contributor to algae blooms. Dr. Souto cites a third source: a thick muck that has covered the once-pristine sand on the estuary floor, an accumulation of decades of pollutants and nitrogen-rich decayed plant matter.

"It would almost take a giant vacuum cleaner to remove it," she said. "It remains a source of nitrogen, and whenever it's stirred up, it goes back into the water."

The Brevard waters seemed deceptively healthy in the mid-2000s, perhaps because a prolonged drought reduced the flow of nitrogen into the estuary. But when heavy rains returned in 2011, experts suggest, the resulting slug of pollution triggered the algae blooms.

With the sea grass mostly gone, there are few roots to stabilize the nitrogen-heavy muck when winds stir up the waters. A switch from septic tanks to sewer systems - and, perhaps, a giant vacuum cleaner - might quickly restore the Brevard waters to health. Otherwise, experts say, recovery seems likely to be a longer, more arduous process.

That makes the question of whether the estuary's problems are linked to the wildlife die-offs all the more important. But that is likely to be a devilishly difficult investigation, scientists say.

The manatees died without warning, while the dolphins and pelicans wasted away over days, losing muscle and becoming disoriented. Manatees eat plants; dolphins and pelicans eat fish. Manatees and dolphins are mammals; pelicans are birds. Pelicans died by the hundreds; other estuary birds seem to have gone mostly unscathed. Other creatures that eat seaweed, like sea turtles, also seem to have remained healthy.

There are few clues. In fact, there are even few dolphins; most decomposed or were eaten by sharks before useful body parts could be recovered.

One of the best clues, however, involves the seaweed that replaced the estuary's sea grass.

The three Banana River manatees seemed to be in robust health when they died. The sole exception was their intestines, which showed evidence of severe shock or irritation. Autopsies showed that the stomachs of all three manatees were filled with macroalgae, mostly a fanlike seaweed called gracilaria.

"We hypothesize that whatever caused these manatees to die was either ingested or gotten through drinking," Martine de Wit, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who autopsied the manatees, said in an interview. "It's logical to think it's the macroalgae that they ingested." A federal laboratory is analyzing seaweed samples in search of toxins.

Both Dr. de Wit and Jan H. Landsberg, a biotoxin expert at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute of the Conservation Commission who is helping coordinate the inquiry, emphasize that the hypothesis is just one of many. The deaths "might just be coincidental," Dr. Landsberg said. "The key is not to go down too many rabbit holes."

And to go down the most promising ones quickly. For the deaths may not be a one-time event; the estuary's dolphins suffered suspiciously similar, still unexplained die-offs in 2001 and 2008.

"If this spreads," she said, "we don't know what the implications are."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Deaths of Manatees, Dolphins and Pelicans Point to Estuary at Risk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mr. Rice's fear, widely shared, is that an ecosystem that supports more than 4,300 species of wildlife - and commercial fisheries, tourism and other businesses generating nearly $4 billion annually - is buckling under the strain of decades of pollution generated by coastal Florida's explosive development. The evidence of decline is compelling.

# data[].attributes.headline
Councillor warns of threat to estuary dolphins

# data[].attributes.subject
Councillor warns of threat to estuary dolphins

# data[].attributes.body
Trinity Blythe
Estuaries have a negative impact on dolphins

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Councillor Ian Lynch has expressed concern over what he says is the continued trawling of the Shannon Estuary, claiming it could have a negative effect on the bottle-nosed dolphin population in the area.

He says he was contacted by members of the public when two trawlers were seen operating on the estuary.

"Trawling the river estuary is not illegal and I appreciate that fishing is an extremely tough industry but the Shannon Estuary is a designated Special Area of Conservation. Pair trawling could have a detrimental effect on the natural ecology of the maritime life," Councillor Lynch said.

"I am calling on the minister to ban trawling in the Shannon Estuary until a detailed study is carried out on the effects this activity could have on the ecological system. Only when this study is completed, will we truly know if trawling our fish stocks is sustainable. As well as an increased risk of capturing seals or dolphins, if we deplete our fish stocks and ruin the ecological system, it could take decades to recover. This could destroy the natural feeding grounds for the 130 bottle-nose dolphins in the estuary. This is a direct threat to the Shannon Estuary as a sanctuary for such dolphins. We have to ensure that we protect our natural environment even when we cannot see it.

"The natural ecological system is continuously under threat from pollutants from domestic, industrial, farming and plastics wastes. The fact that we continue to pump untreated sewage into the river is still a huge issue, so we must ensure that we protect our maritime environment as much as we can. The knock-on effect could be devastating on the local economy, affecting tourist attractions and businesses such as dolphin-watching and angling in West Clare. The region is known for its sustainable tourism industry around maritime activities, which is important to our local economy," he maintained.

Peter O'Connell

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Councillor warns of threat to estuary dolphins

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Councillor Ian Lynch has expressed concern over what he says is the continued trawling of the Shannon Estuary, claiming it could have a negative effect on the bottle-nosed dolphin population in the area. He says he was contacted by members of the public when two trawlers were seen operating on the estuary.

# data[].attributes.body
All the trash that has been dumped in to the ocean which is poisoning all the aquatic animals in the water

# data[].attributes.body
pleb is below, he pollutes the internet

# data[].attributes.body
There was a patch of trash bigger than Mexico found in the Pacific Ocean, the solution is for people to stop littering and start recycling plastic instead of throwing it away.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yet another floating mass of microscopic plastic has been discovered in the ocean, and it is mind-blowingly vast.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.marinelittersolutions.com/about-marine-litter/what-is-marine-litter/?gclid=Cj0KCQiArYDQBRDoARIsAMR8s_QT0Ahh-OPow6reRRcXLoOTpJknFItZmejXcCE-JFdTkrgS0TUpY7caAl3bEALw_wcB they are talking about how liter affects water pollution. they talk about the most littered items.the picture below is a guy sorting through debris. goal is to have less plastic in water

# data[].attributes.headline
     Chocking the Oceans with plastic                James Allen

# data[].attributes.subject
     Chocking the Oceans with plastic                James Allen

# data[].attributes.body
The world is basically a ball of plastic waiting for someone to take it out to the ocean and dump,then just destroy our ocean. There is this thing called "The Plastic Foot"... plastic biodegrade grows exceptionally slow as well as braking into tiny pieces. 2.3 Billions of plastic found in ocean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | Choking the Oceans With Plastic (Published 2014)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is growing — and there is really only one way to make it shrink.

# data[].attributes.body
marine litter is not only ugly -it can harm ocean ecosystem, wildlife, and humans. www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22Plastics-t.html

# data[].attributes.body
Seattle wants to ban all plastic straws and plasticware in restaurants and convenience stores.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Emerald City is eliminating millions of plastic straws thanks to a collaboration between activists, business and the maker of a marine-safe alternative to a ubiquitous product. Now the campaign is moving to other major cities.

Seattle's Space Needle and the downtown skyline.Carl Larson/Getty Images

- In June, actor and environmental activist Adrian Grenier appeared at the United Nations Ocean Conference in New York City to promote his Lonely Whale Foundation's campaign against plastic straws, a billion of which are used each day worldwide with an untold number ending up in the sea.

To fight ocean plastic pollution, "We have to start with something simple, accessible and inspirational to get as many people on board as possible," Grenier, the U.N. Environment Programme's newly appointed goodwill ambassador, tells a standing-room-only crowd in a usually deserted press room. "Instead of asking people to change their entire life, start with something small, such as stop using single-use plastic straws."

Old ways, however, die hard. As Grenier wraps up his talk and poses with selfie-seeking fans, I head down a floor and join delegates and diplomats queuing up at a U.N. cafe. I notice something that I probably would not have blinked at before - cafe workers are plunking plastic straws into every cold drink. Before I can object, an iced tea is handed to me with a serving of non-biodegradable plastic that may well come to rest in the gut of some unfortunate sea turtle or another marine animal.

That encounter illustrates the consciousness-raising potential of the strawless campaign - and the challenge of changing long-ingrained habits and a supply chain that results in the use of 500 million disposable plastic straws a day in the United States alone, or half of global consumption.

There is one city, though, showing that it is possible to stop sucking when it comes to ocean plastic pollution. As of July 1, 2018, Seattle will ban disposable plastic straws and cutlery from restaurants, cafes and other food-service businesses - some 3,100 establishments that range from Starbucks to sports stadiums. But Seattle is already shedding millions of plastic straws in a collaboration involving the Lonely Whale Foundation, high-profile local companies, city officials and the manufacturer of ocean-friendly paper straws. It's a model that Lonely Whale plans to take to at least 10 cities next year.

Three months after his U.N. appearance, Grenier traveled to the Seattle Aquarium to launch an effort to eliminate at least 1 million plastic straws in the Emerald City during the month of September. "Water, water everywhere and it's full of plastic," says the "Entourage" star. "We must radically change if we're going to have clean seas."

Adrian Grenier at a press conference on September 7, 2017 , to unveil the Lonely Whale Foundation's "Strawless in Seattle" campaign. (Todd Woody)

The " Strawless in Seattle " campaign aimed to persuade people to forgo plastic straws and to get restaurants, bars and other businesses to either stop handing them out or offer sustainable alternatives. In a sports-mad town, Lonely Whale enlisted celebrity athletes such as Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson in social media campaigns and signed up 200 restaurants operating at such venues as the Space Needle, CenturyLink Field - home of the Seahawks - and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Grenier threw out the opening pitch at the Seattle Mariners' game on September 1, kicking off four weeks of concerts, pop-up shops and other events promoting the campaign.

When September drew to a close, Lonely Whale reported that 2.3 million single-use plastic straws had been eliminated in Seattle during the month. (The foundation calculated the figure by comparing straw usage at participating venues prior to the campaign with the number of compostable paper straws they purchased in September. Other companies opted only to hand out straws upon request and tracked that number.)

"It's really not about straws - the straws are just a gateway to change behavior," says Dune Ives, executive director of the Lonely Whale Foundation. "It's really about our relationship with single-use plastics, and as a society, our to-go culture."

And like many relationships, it's complicated.

Paper or Plastic?

Fifty years ago, plastic straws were simply not an issue as nearly all straws then were made of paper. The introduction of the plastic straw in the 1960s changed all of that.

"The old paper straws were terrible," says David Rhodes, global business director for paper straw maker Aardvark, the corporate descendant of the company founded by Marvin Stone, who invented the original paper straw in 1888. "They were soggy, they leaked. When plastics came along, they were better and cheaper. Environmentally, they were terrible, though no one was thinking about that then."

Plastic straws quickly came to dominate the market and paper straw makers, including Aardvark's parent company, Precision Products Group, exited the business. Then one day a decade ago, marine park operator SeaWorld called out of the blue. "SeaWorld tell us that they use plastic straws but they're worried that their whales and marine mammals would eat them," recalls Rhodes. "They asked whether we would consider bringing back the paper straw."

Days later, the chief executive of Montana Grill, the restaurant chain owned by media mogul and environmentalist Ted Turner, called. He also wanted to replace plastic straws with paper. "The whole world had gone plastic by then," says Rhodes. "There was not a paper straw on the planet 10 years ago." And most plastic straws were no longer made in America - the $3 billion industry was now largely offshore in China, India and other countries.

But the inquiries continued to come - cruise lines, theme parks and aquariums wanted to switch to paper for environmental reasons. Seeing a niche market, Precision created a new division, Aardvark, to get back into a very old business.

The Problem With (Compostable) Plastic

Around that time in 2008, the city of Seattle enacted a groundbreaking ordinance that prohibited restaurants, cafes and other businesses from selling food in disposable, single-use packaging and providing customers with non-compostable or unrecyclable cutlery and straws. A ban on expanded polystyrene packaging - Styrofoam - went into effect in 2009. But the ordinance allowed for one-year waivers if suitable alternatives to plastic straws and cutlery were not available. The last waiver was issued this year and will not be extended when it expires on June 30, 2018.

"When the ordinance was first passed, there were probably 25-50 tested compostable products that were in the Seattle marketplace at the time," says Sego Jackson, strategic adviser for waste prevention and product stewardship at Seattle Public Utilities. "Now there are over 850 items that have been tested, including straws."

"Compostable plastic straws have been around for a number of years at least," he adds. "Certainly in the Seattle area, they have been coming into more widespread use."

There are a few big catches, though.

Compostable straws will eventually biodegrade, but you can't just throw them into your backyard composter. They must be processed in an industrial facility, which is not available in every city, according to industry experts. (Due to their size and shape, compostable plastic straws cannot be recycled, says Jackson.)

Most significantly, compostable plastic straws will not biodegrade in the ocean. Once in the water, they're there forever, posing a hazard to dolphins, whales, seabirds and other marine life.

That was news to David Young, senior vice president of operations for the Seattle Seahawks and general manager of the football team's stadium, CenturyLink Field.

The Seahawks have led efforts to green up sports by putting solar panels on their stadium, recycling 97 percent of the waste generated at games and slashing water use by installing ultra-low-flow fixtures in bathrooms. And the 67,000-capacity stadium had already ditched disposable plastic straws for compostable plastic ones.

"We thought we had been doing a good job with our compostable straws," says Young. "Then we sat down with Dune Ives at Lonely Whale and she said, 'That's great, but those don't biodegrade in the ocean.'"

During the "Strawless in Seattle" campaign, CenturyLink made a permanent switch to marine biodegradable paper straws made by Aardvark. "We saw how far those had come in the last few years in terms of durability and thought it was time to make a change," says Young. "Given that 95 percent of the seafood we sell is sustainably harvested, it just made sense to take that next step for ocean health."

The Last Straw

For Rhodes, the growing interest in Aardvark's paper straws coincided with his growing awareness of the ocean plastic pollution crisis.

"I live on the beach in Belize," he says. "And every day I rake out hundreds of plastic things on that beach." One day one of those things included an iconic green straw. "There's not a Starbucks within a thousand miles of us and it made its way to our beach. I said to myself, 'This is crazy.'"

Whether that green straw was once attached to a grande decaf no-foam low-fat Frappuccino - and how it got to Belize - is unknown. But it became clear to Rhodes that selling paper straws was not just about selling paper straws.

Aardvark's marine biodegradable paper straws. (Todd Woody)

To grab a big share of even a niche market, Aardvark had to innovate. There are other paper straws available, but some are Trojan horses because they contain a plastic liner. Others are made in China, but these tend to wilt in liquids, according to Rhodes.

So Aardvark re-engineered the paper straw. Rhodes says the paper it uses - "that's kind of like the secret sauce" - comes from wood certified as sustainably grown in a three-state area surrounding the company's Indiana factory. Same with the adhesive - "It's a glue that you and I can drink. It's almost like milk." A special safe-to-suck ink allows the straws to be customized with colorful logos.

"The beautiful thing about this is that it'll last all day in your drink but then it's gone in 45 days, whether it's sitting in a landfill or on a beach - it just dissolves," says Rhodes, who has worked with Lonely Whale, the Surfrider Foundation and other ocean advocates. "You use a plastic straw for a few minutes and then it's around for millions of years."

Rhodes would not specify how many straws Aardvark manufactures annually - "we make hundreds of millions" - but says the company supplied more than 2 million straws to businesses participating in "Strawless in Seattle." Among them was Safeco Field, the 48,000-capacity home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team.

For Ives of the Lonely Whale Foundation, it's not enough to legislate plastic straws away - there has to be public support for such bans and a willingness to just say no to straws. There also needs to be a viable sustainable option that businesses can provide to their customers. That makes participation by companies such as Aardvark key. "As venues are coming onboard to this concept, they are still nervous about not having a straw," she says. "They believe that customers are so conditioned to getting a straw in their water, a straw in their cocktail, that it's important to have an alternative."

The Green Straw

A wild card in the strawless campaign in Seattle - and elsewhere - is Starbucks, the hometown Goliath. Starbucks' more than 25,000 company-owned and licensed stores use some 2 billion plastic straws each year by its calculations, according to Ives, who has been in discussions with the coffee giant since January.

"That's a lot of straws and lids," she says. "Where they are expanding globally, there's not the infrastructure to capture that waste. They have told us that in communities where policy change requires an alternative, they will move forward with a compostable paper straw."

Starbucks' more than 100 Seattle stores are subject to the upcoming ban on disposable plastic straws. The company, however, has not revealed how it will adhere to the ordinance, nor did it participate in the "Strawless in Seattle" campaign.

The company did not respond to questions about how it will comply with the ban on plastic straws.

Whether Seattle food service companies ultimately choose compostable paper or compostable plastic straws remains to be seen. Price is one factor. "A standard plastic straw might cost half a penny, a compostable plastic straw might cost a penny and a compostable paper straw might be a cent and a half," says Rhodes. "The economics mean that compostable paper straws will never be cheaper than a plastic straw. But you can't print on plastic straws. So we can put the Seattle Seahawks on our straws and you get advertising for a penny and a half."

Jackson of Seattle Public Utilities believes that as ocean plastic pollution becomes a hot-button issue, restaurants and cafes may be swayed to choose paper regardless of the cost. "As businesses begin to understand that compostable plastic doesn't address the plastic pollution issue in the ocean, that may be a driver for them," he says.

Rhodes estimates that the market for compostable paper straws in Seattle could be close to 100 million straws a year. "If Starbucks switches to paper, then all bets are off," he says, noting that Aardvark would consider opening a Seattle area manufacturing plant if such demand materializes.

The Invisible Straw

While several cities in California are considering bans on plastic straws, the next front in the straw wars is to make such bans unnecessary.

"The most potent thing is for businesses to give people straws only on request or only when they need them," says Jackson. "You can really reduce the single use of any kind of straw by doing that."

One way to do that is through municipal regulation. The other, preferred by advocates such as the Lonely Whale Foundation, is to reduce demand for plastic straws by raising awareness across a broad demographic of a city's residents.

"We're firm believers that the market needs to lead policy changes," says Ives. "What we're really interested in is creating campaigns in markets that allow policymakers to come onboard knowing that they have the support of the community behind them."

She says that some 40 large cities have contacted the Lonely Whale Foundation about bringing the strawless campaign to their town.

Paper and reusable straws currently account for just 1 percent of the global market, according to Rhodes. But he thinks daily plastic straw consumption could be cut from 1 billion to 750 million over the next few years by providing them only on demand. He believes switching to sustainable straws could eliminate another 25 percent.

"One good thing is that we are seeing behaviors change," he says. "We fully support the elimination of straws whenever possible. That may seem odd for a straw manufacturer to say, but you have to do it for the good of the planet."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Strawless in Seattle: How One City Is Tackling Ocean Plastic Pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Emerald City is eliminating millions of plastic straws thanks to a collaboration between activists, business and the maker of a marine-safe alternative to a ubiquitous product. Now the campaign is moving to other major cities.

# data[].attributes.headline
Fukushima nuclear disaster will impact forests, rivers and estuaries for hundreds of years, warns Greenpeace report -jihane wahbi/scarlet sanchez

# data[].attributes.subject
Fukushima nuclear disaster will impact forests, rivers and estuaries for hundreds of years, warns Greenpeace report -jihane wahbi/scarlet sanchez

# data[].attributes.body
so interesting!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Press release - 4 March, 2016

"The government's massive decontamination program will have almost no impact on reducing the ecological threat from the enormous amount of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Already, over 9 million cubic metres of nuclear waste are scattered over at least 113,000 locations across Fukushima prefecture," said Kendra Ulrich, Senior Nuclear Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan.

"The Abe government is perpetuating a myth that five years after the start of the nuclear accident the situation is returning to normal. The evidence exposes this as political rhetoric, not scientific fact. And unfortunately for the victims, this means they are being told it is safe to return to environments where radiation levels are often still too high and are surrounded by heavy contamination."

The report is based on a large body of independent scientific research in impacted areas in the Fukushima region, as well as investigations by Greenpeace radiation specialists over the past five years. It exposes deeply flawed assumptions by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Abe government in terms of both decontamination and ecosystem risks. It further draws on research on the environmental impact of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe as an indication of the potential future for contaminated areas in Japan.

The environmental impacts are already becoming apparent, with studies showing:

High radiation concentrations in new leaves, and at least in the case of cedar, in pollen;

apparent increases in growth mutations of fir trees with rising radiation levels;

heritable mutations in pale blue grass butterfly populations and DNA-damaged worms in highly contaminated areas, as well as apparent reduced fertility in barn swallows;

decreases in the abundance of 57 bird species with higher radiation levels over a four year study; and

high levels of caesium contamination in commercially important freshwater fish; and radiological contamination of one of the most important ecosystems - coastal estuaries.

"There is no end in sight for communities in Fukushima - nearly 100,000 people haven't returned home and many won't be able to. The Japanese government should put its citizens first, the majority of who reject the restart of nuclear reactors. Many are demanding the only safe and clean options that can meet Japan's needs - renewable energy," said Ulrich.

Greenpeace has conducted 25 radiological investigations in Fukushima since March 2011. In 2015, it focused on the contamination of forested mountains in Iitate district, northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Both Greenpeace and independent research have shown the movement of radioactivity from contaminated mountain watersheds, which can then enter coastal ecosystems. The Abukuma, one of Japan's largest rivers which flows largely through Fukushima prefecture, is projected to discharge 111 TBq of 137Cs and 44 TBq of 134Cs, in the 100 years after the accident.

Currently, a Greenpeace Japan led research team is investigating the radiation contamination of the ocean and river estuary sediments along the coastline of Fukushima. The underwater investigation is being conducted from a Japanese research vessel, supported by the Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior. The Fukushima disaster is the single largest release of radioactivity into the ocean and one of only two Level 7 nuclear disasters in world history - the other being Chernobyl.

ENDS
Notes to editors:
The report: " Radiation Reloaded: Ecological Impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident - 5 years on "

More information on the campaign in Japan can be found here: www.greenpeace.org/japan/erj/

PHOTO: Full collection of images of the research and underwater marine research can be accessed here.

VIDEO: News clip reel of underwater, estuary and drone footage of contamination sites can be accessed here.
Media contacts:
Kendra Ulrich, Senior Global Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace Japan, , +81 9064 785 408

Chisato Jono, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Japan, , mob: +81 (0)80-6558-4446

Greenpeace International Press Desk, , phone: +31 (0) 20 718 2470 (available 24 hours)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fukushima nuclear disaster will impact forests, rivers and estuaries for hundreds of years, warns Greenpeace report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tokyo, 4 March 2016 - The environmental impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster will last decades to centuries, warns a new Greenpeace Japan report. Man-made, long-lived radioactive elements are absorbed into the living tissues of plants and animals and recycled through food webs, and carried downstream to the Pacific Ocean by typhoons, snowmelt, and flooding.

# data[].attributes.body
http://fortune.com/2015/10/01/ocean-plastic-pollution/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ocean Plastic Pollution is Reaching Crisis Levels

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plastic pollution in the ocean has reached crisis levels and must be addressed in Asia, where most pollution occurs, a report found.