Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is sometimes called the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Garbage Whirlpool and is a floating garbage dump gathered in the North Pacific subtropical circulation located between the two high pressure zones between Hawaii and California. Most of the garbage in the patch (also called marine garbage) is plastic, but some are made of other materials such as glass and rubber. Although the garbage patch is too big and too deep under the sea surface, scientists can not judge the amount of garbage, but collected up to 750,000 bits plastic per square kilometer (

Unfortunately, the influence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is far beyond view. According to a recent survey by The Ocean Cleanup, 84% of the plastic at the Great Pacific landfill contains harmful chemical pollutants. This will affect the ocean in the form of increased acidification, but to be frank, in the long run, we do not know the environmental impact of these chemicals. But this is not the worst. Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the five revolution in the world. There, plastics are beginning to accumulate at astonishing rates. In the North Pacific, the South Pacific, the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, there is a unique patch that slowly spreads to the sea.

The Great Pacific Trash Patch, also known as Pacific Trash Vortex or gyre, is located in the middle of the North Pacific, which is larger than Texas. There are garbage in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean as well. A patch is defined as containing more plastic than the surrounding ocean. Up to now, five patches were discovered. As long as plastic enters the sea, about 20% of the waste comes from vessels and platforms on the sea. The rest of the information source is that garbage is blown away by the sea by the tide of the beach, or by deliberately throwing out garbage. To make matters worse, these plastics are not biodegradable, so they are broken down into small pieces consumed by fish and marine mammals. Plastics kill more than 100,000 turtles and birds every year due to ingestion and intertwining. For details, please see Project Green Bag.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific Pacific Garbage Swirl, extends to the waters of North America from the west coast to Japan. The patch actually consists of garbage patches in the west in the vicinity of Japan and garbage patches in the eastern part between Hawaii and California. These rotating debris areas are connected by a North Pacific subtropical convergence belt several hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This confluence is where warm water from the South Pacific meets the cooler water from the North Pole. This area is like an expressway that moves garbage from one patch to the other. The whole Great Pacific Garbage Patch is surrounded by subtropical circulation in the North Pacific. Ocean circulation is a circular ocean current system formed by the wind pattern of the earth and the force generated by rotation of the planet. These four currents move clockwise with an area of ​​20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles).