Bill Rotella
02-23-2008, 06:36 AM
Yet another story about how humans are trashing the earth...
Pacific floating rubbish dump 'bigger than U.S.' - the world's largest rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, is starting to alarm scientists with its ever-growing size and possible impact on human health. It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents. The "patch" is in fact two massive, linked areas of circulating rubbish. The waste forms in what are called tropical gyres - areas where the oceans slowly circulate due to extreme high pressure systems and where there is little wind. Although the boundaries change, it stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. "It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States." There are about 100 million tonnes of plastic circulating in the northern Pacific - or about 2.5% of all plastic items made since 1950. About 20% of the junk is thought to come from marine craft, while the rest originates from countries around the Pacific like Mexico and China.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 61,00.html
Pacific floating rubbish dump 'bigger than U.S.' - the world's largest rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, is starting to alarm scientists with its ever-growing size and possible impact on human health. It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents. The "patch" is in fact two massive, linked areas of circulating rubbish. The waste forms in what are called tropical gyres - areas where the oceans slowly circulate due to extreme high pressure systems and where there is little wind. Although the boundaries change, it stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. "It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States." There are about 100 million tonnes of plastic circulating in the northern Pacific - or about 2.5% of all plastic items made since 1950. About 20% of the junk is thought to come from marine craft, while the rest originates from countries around the Pacific like Mexico and China.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 61,00.html