(24-11-10) The world's largest garbage dump continues to grow. Year after year it is reported that a plastic island as big as one third of Europe spreads out the Pacific between California and Japan.

    No sea or ocean is safe. In every square kilometre of salt water there are about 20,000 floating plastic debris, according to the United Unions some years ago, through its Environment Programme (UNEP). And this number is growing.

    At the same time, a Greenpeace report about marine pollution said that east of Indonesia, a highly populated area, plastic trash covers up to 90% of the coastline and beaches. It is a fact confirmed year after year.

    Since then, nothing has improved, but the opposite thing. It is proved that, if the North Pacific concentrates most of floating plastics in the world, the largest sowing of underwater plastic waste in the world is in the bottoms of the Mediterranean, among the coasts of Spain, France and Italy.

    The “continent” of trash spreads out from California (USA) to Japan. It could be as much as twice the surface of Texas, 3.43 million km2 (one third the surface of Europe) and weights 4 million tones and has 150 million tones of trash. Ocean pollution kills over a million and half of seabirds each year and 150,000 marine mammals.

    That huge “garbage island” keeps growing alarmingly and it is the largest garbage dump in the world (covers about 500 miles off the coast of California, Hawaii and almost reaches Japan).

    Charles Moore, the US oceanographer who discovered the “great garbage patch” thinks that it has 150 million tones of rubbish. Marcus Eriksen, U.S. research director, says that it “is a plastic soup”.

WHEN IT APPROACHES THE COASTLINE IS DRAMATIC

    Curtis Ebbesmeyer, another renowned oceanographer who has sailed in that plastic soup says “It moves as if it were a great animal without a leash”. “When this patch approaches to the coast, such as the Hawaiian archipelago, the result is dramatic, leaving the coastline covered in plastic”.

    A research carried out by another US foundation has reiterated that the increase in the extent of the trash “continent”. The effect on marine life is being very negative, as experts say, but it can reach all the food chain, up to humans.

    This enormous garbage conglomerate has trebled its size since the mid-90’s and it could be ten times bigger in the next decade if we do not stop generating so much waste, the experts warn.

    The data come from an investigation lasting more than 10 years, conducted by Algalita Marine Research Foundation, a U.S. organization dedicated to protect the marine environment through research, education and the restoration of the environment.

    LTrash from the coasts and boats are led by ocean currents to what has been called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, which is estimated to weigh 4 million tons, with more than 3,8 million waste per square kilometer, and 80% of them are plastics.

IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THE RUBBISH IS AT THE BOTTOM

    On the other hand, the area in the Mediterranean sea with more waste in its bottoms is the northwest area (Spain, France and Italy), with has a higher rate of plastic fragments in the world, 1,935 units per km2 according to a Greenpeace report.

    The environmental organization estimated that there are 6.5 million tons of wastes in the world's oceans, from which it is estimated that only fifteen percent is in suspension. It is, we cannot see 85 percent of the waste but it is there, and 80 percent is plastics.

    Eighty percent of this waste comes from land and ninety percent of it is made up of plastic bags. Among the causes of the great presence of trash in the Mediterranean, mainly plastics that use to exceed 450 years of life, it is the nature of semi-enclosed sea, surrounded by developed countries with large maritime traffic.

    Biologists and researchers agree that it takes about 100 years for plastic to decompose, so it is polluting the soil and/or substrates during that time. When people decide to burn it, it is even worse because it emits dioxins and CO2.

    Dioxins cause cancer and CO2 contaminates the environment directly. It releases a lot of additional substances such as soot, which deposits in our lungs if we breathe it.

    Solution: a change in our life habits to prevent the figures published by Greenpeace. In our planet there are about 150 million tones of plastic, of which about 10% go into the sea.

POINT WITH CONCENTRATION OF POLLUTANTS

    Given its location in the North Pacific subtropical gyre, the continued accumulation of waste is warranted here. This is a large area of the Pacific where water spiral around a central point, clockwise.

    There winds are weak and currents tend to lead the matter floating to the central area of the spiral with low energy. There are few islands where floating material can be collected, and it remains in the whirlwind in quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton.

    This phenomenon is not very well known because it is in an area of the Pacific that is little visited because there is no wind to attract sailing vessels, there is no biological diversity that favors fishing, and it is not in the major shipping lines.

    However, this garbage is causing irreparable damage to marine life in the area. Plastics are not biodegradable and, as time goes by, the only thing that happens to them is that they are divided into smaller and smaller pieces but retain the original molecular composition.

    The result is a huge quantity of “sand” made of plastic that many marine creatures think it is food. The problem is that plastic cannot be digested, so birds and fish that consume it can die of malnutrition with the stomach filled with plastics.

    And, although the amount of plastic they eat did not block the entry of food, the thing is that the small plastic granules act like sponges for some toxins, concentrating chemical products such as DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, main organochlorine in insecticides) or PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenyls, highly poisonous) at a rate one million times the normal level.

THE FOOD CHAIN IS AFFECTED

    This way, there would be a signal chain that can reach humans when eating contaminated fish unknowing, if the animal has eating plastics in the ocean. Birds are also affected because they come to the continent of garbage searching food, and the same happens to sea turtles, prone to mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eating them. They have been registered almost 300 species affected by these mistakes.

    Unfortunately, this problem seems to be insuperable due to the surface of the “continent”, whose treatment and cleaning would be extremely expensive, thousands of millions euros, according to specialists. Plastics and garbage of this great path are over 30 meters deep.

Text: Guadalupe Romero with Greenpeace and
Algalita Marine Researh Foundation reports