Current Discussion Spotlight: Ocean Cleanup
The Great Pacific garbage patch (also Pacific trash vortex and North Pacific Garbage Patch is a garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N.
The collection of plastic and floating trash originates from the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia, North America, and South America. The gyre is divided into two areas, the "Eastern Garbage Patch" from California to Hawaii, and the "Western Garbage Patch" extending from Hawaii to Japan.
The Worlds Garbage Patches are not Huge Islands
Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4 particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. This is because the patch is a widely dispersed area consisting primarily of suspended "fingernail-sized or smaller"—often microscopic—particles in the upper water column known as microplastics.
Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup project claimed that the patch covers 1.6 million square kilometres (620 thousand square miles) consisting of 45–129 thousand metric tons (50–142 thousand short tons) of plastic as of 2018. Some of the plastic in the patch is over 50 years old, and includes items (and fragments of items) such as "plastic lighters, toothbrushes, water bottles, pens, baby bottles, cell phones, plastic bags, and nurdles." The small fibers of wood pulp found throughout the patch are "believed to originate from the thousands of tons of toilet paper flushed into the oceans daily.
Hot Topic - The Carbon Cycle
Fast carbon cycle showing the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of tons (gigatons) per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, white are stored carbon. The effects of the slow carbon cycle, such as volcanic and tectonic activity are not included.[1]
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Plastic's Impact on Global Fisheries
Ocean health is at an all time low. Learn about the critical condition of our ocean, the need for sustainable fishing, fishery restoration and plastic's devistating and widespread impact on the global oceans.
The urgent need to cleanup existing plastic waste and fishnets.
Additional focus on passing legislation to require biodegradable fishnets with larger webbing to allow smaller fish to pass through and propagate to help sustainability, and getting nurdles listed as a toxic material.
Oceana
at 7:20am
Oceana analyzed e-commerce packaging data and found that Amazon generated 599 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2020. This is a 29% increase of Oceana’s 2019 estimate of 465 million pounds. The report also found that Amazon’s estimated plastic packaging waste, in the form of air pillows alone, would circle the Earth more than 600 times.
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California State Assembly
at 7:20am
The California State Assembly passed legislation (AB 2026) with a 41-26 vote Thursday evening to reduce the unnecessary use of plastic packaging in online shopping. If approved by the California Senate and signed by the Governor, this would be a first in the nation law aimed at limiting single-use plastic waste generated from online shopping.
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Angry Person
at 7:20am
Just like California, running up the prices of things we buy.
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California State Assembly
at 7:20am
This program will not increase prices. The cost is absorbed by an offset of the cost of cleaning pollution. Pollution cleanup has considerable cost. With less pollution comes less expense.
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Ocean Waste Plastic
at 7:20am
OWP is PCR raw materials (no virgin plastic raw materials are used). If a packaging weighs 20 grams and is purchased as 50% OWP, then 10 gram of the packaging is made of PCR raw materials. At the same time the 10 gram of plastic is removed from oceans and rivers through our partner ReSea Project. The plastic collected is not used in the packaging.
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