What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
Located halfway between the west coast of the United States and Japan floats a mass of plastic twice the size of Texas. It is a swirling mass of plastic waste caused by 80 percent land run off and 20 percent ship dumping.

This trash gets trapped between two main gyres that act as a whirlpool and collect this trash. In some areas the plastics are estimated to be 90 feet thick.

What is a gyre?
A gyre is a current system that pulls water from one place in the ocean and moves ot somewhere else. Worldwide, there are five major large-scale subtropical oceanic gyres that are formed by ocean currents. They are the North and South Pacific Subtropical Gyres, the North and South Atlantic Subtropical Gyres, and the Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is the gyre most notably known for collecting debris and is made up of four large, clockwise-rotating currents – North Pacific, California, North Equatorial, and Kuroshio. Where these gyres converge is where we find these trapped plastics

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

What happens to the plastic?
For the most part this plastic floats around trapped in the gyre for years. It begins to decompose but never truly breaks down. As small particles start to dissolve into the ocean they are mistakenly eaten by small organisms. These organisms are then eaten by small fish and the plastic enters the food chain. Sea birds mistake larger pieces of plastic as food eat them. As they ingest more and more plastic they begin to slowly die. The image below is a dead albatross filled with plastic

Bird found dead full of plastic

What can I do as an individual?
There are many things we can do in our everyday lives to drastically decrease the amount of plastics that end up in our ocean. First and foremost, be a smart consumer:

1. Stop using plastic shopping bags: We use 1 TRILLION plastic bags per year -1,000,000,000,000 worldwide
2. Stop buying bottled water: 9/10 water bottles are NOT RECYCLED in the United States
3. Recycle your plastics DON'T throw them in the trash
4. Remember that EVERYTHING LEADS TO THE OCEAN

9 out of 10 plastic water bottles are NOT recycled in the USA