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Mike Munoz
Ms.Martin
Garbage Patch
11 February 2016

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Did you know that about 80 percent of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch comes from North America & Asia, the other 20 percent come from
boats,which leave about 750,000 pounds of fishing nets in the ocean(Mark). 90
percent of trash in the ocean are plastic pieces that are outnumbering sea life six
to one(Mark).Captain Charles Moore was the first to notice the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch in 1997. Then a racing boat captain, he was sailing from Hawaii
to southern California when he stumbled upon plastic as far as the eye could
see.

The Pacific Garbage Patch is a problem to which I can contribute a

solution by educating my peers on this situation. Educating people is a very
effective way because you are informing them about this massive issue that the
news is suppressing. Also, this could create a chain reaction in which the
informed people can pass on this important information that I am teaching them.

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According to Mark Mccormick, the Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size
of texas and it stretches for hundreds of miles. This is very freighting considering
that we humans are the ones that are feeding this cancer. Underneath the
Garbage Patch lies a subtropical gyre, a slow moving spiral with high-pressure
air currents(SIlverman) and are filled with millions of pounds of plastic trash that
goes down 100 feet from the surface of the ocean. The centerpiece of the
garbage patch is plastic, which is not biodegradable, thus it can only break down
into smaller pieces. The marine animals confuse plastic as food,as a result the
animal dies from blocked arteries(Silverman).For example, two hundred
thousand albatrosses die from consuming plastic as food and one million marine
animals die from being caught in plastic debris.

The garbage patch is a massive problem, it's already twice the size of the
state of texas and over the last 35 years we have quadrupled the amount of
plastic waste in the ocean. According to the website take-part, the plastic waste
has caused about 13 billion dollars worth of damage to beaches and ocean
habitats! we cannot ignore this massive issue because there are very serious
consequences if we do not make a change. For example, plastic chemicals can
be absorbed by our body,as a result 93 percent of americans six or older would
test positive for BPA(Lynn).

One easy solution to reduce the garbage patch would be to simply pick up
waste, because it is the most effective way to collect plastic items(Dunning).This

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solution works seeing that around 80 percent of the trash comes from the
land(Mark). Dr. Sherman from Imperial's Grantham Institute said,"The Great
Pacific garbage patch has a huge mass of microplastics, but the largest flow of
plastics is actually off the coasts, where it enters the oceans".

On the bright side, there is an amazing project to help remove plastics

inside the garbage patch and around coastal beaches. The project is called,The
Ocean Cleanup,which plans to deploy plastic collectors around the
region(Dunning). Infact, they have already started on this ten year project,which
is set to end in 2025. The Ocean Cleanup team has found out that they can
remove at least 31 percent of microplastics, if they put plastic collectors around
china(Dunning).

Works cited
Dunning, Hayley. "To Clean up Ocean Plastics Focus on Coasts, Not the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch." EurekAlert! Imperial College London, 18 Jan. 2016. Web. 09 Feb.
2016.
Dwyer, LIz. "See the Whales Swimming in an Ocean of 70,000 Plastic Water Bottles."
TakePart. 20 Aug. 2015. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.

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"How the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Destroying the Oceans and the Future for
Marine Life." One Green Planet. Ed. Mark Mccormick. Mar.04.2015. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.
Laubenstein, Taryn. "Mythbuster: The Truth about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch."
Yale Scientific Magazine. 21 Dec. 2013. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.
"NASA Video Reveals How 35 Years of Trash Turned Into Ocean Garbage Patches."
TakePart. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.
Silverman, Jacob. "Why Is the World's Biggest Landfill in Pacific
Ocean?"HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, 19 Sept. 2007. Web. 09 Feb. 2016.

"22 Facts About Plastic Pollution (And 10 Things We Can Do About It)." EcoWatch. Ed.
Lynn Hasselberger. The Green Divas, 2014. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.

Website Sources
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/garbage-patch2.jpg
http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/07/22-facts-plastic-pollution-10-things-can-do-about-it/
http://www.texascenter.org/almanac/Land/c.texasbch.gif
http://ocean.si.edu/sites/default/files/photos/7990147080_72948ec3e3_k.jpg
http://garbagepatch.net/solutions-what-can-you-do/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/sustainable/5-plasticsubstitutes6.htm
http://phys.org/news/2012-02-amazon-fungi-polyurethane-oxygen.html
http://mediaroots.org/great-pacific-garbage-patch-poetry/