Great Pacific Garbage Research Papers

Everybody throws away trash with little or no thought about where it’s going. What you might not know is that a lot of trash goes into our ocean. You may think it is not a big deal and that it’s just a little bit of trash in a really big ocean, but it’s not just a little bit of trash. In fact, it’s a whole lot. There is a place between California and Hawaii called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, but is better known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This area is the largest landfill in the world and is completely in the ocean. What are the effects of the landfill on the environment and how can it be prevented and rehabilitated to its original state?

Landfills are filling up with more and more trash every day and are expanding. Just by separating our trash everyday into plastics, cardboard/paper, cans, etc., we can minimize what we put in the landfills. Even if recycling was mandatory, I think this would help a lot. I spent some time in Germany and was able to participate in recycling more in depth. They recycle almost everything and have strict trash rules. Food that was not consumed goes in one small bin and cans, boxes, paper, etc., were sorted into separate bins as well. If you had something that was not in the proper bin or if your trash bag had something that could be recycled they do not take the trash that day. Some of the food that was not consumed was buried, the cardboard/paper, etc., was sent out to be recycled and reused. All of this helps keep Germany green and clean. Maybe we should follow in Germany’s footsteps to help keep our landfills clean of items that can be recycled and used again. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in 2006, only 32% of the trash that was picked up was recycled in the United States. This leaves 68% of trash that is still going to the landfills and not being recycled. Although this recycling average is low, The Environmental Protection Agency hoped by 2019 the recycle percentage would reach 75%. The amount of trash that one person generates is astonishing. According to the EPA from Green Waste, in a single day 4.5 pounds is thrown out, which is about 1.5 tons of solid waste a year per person. The EPA estimates that 75% of solid waste is recyclable, but 30% is actually being

“We throw out about 254 million tons of solid waste per year in America alone” for comparison that is about 1.27 million average sized blue whales. That is a ton of trash! But, as Americans we do not see all this trash. We barely even touch it. It is all pretty much taken care of for us. So the trash is sort of out of sight out of mind. Let me put this into some

Some people call the Pacific Garbage patch The Floating Island Of Trash. Well, it is trash, but not exactly an island like some people think-- It is more like trash soup located near Midway Island/Atoll. Midway is one third of the distance from Honolulu, Hawaii to Tokyo, Japan. Scientists estimate that it is now the size of America! This garbage patch is a collection of marine debris that is mostly made out of plastic. The debris collects in the pacific garbage patch due to a series of currents that create a circular effect like a toilet bowl and a spiral. These currents are called the gyres;the trash and debris gets trapped. Most of the trash is under the water, and much of it is so small you can not see it. NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association reported that," In 2008 plastic outweighs surface zooplankton 6 to 1." The garbage in Pacific Gyre is mainly plastic. There are plastic bottles, plastic caps, plastic computer parts just to name a few. There is not only one gyre in the ocean, there are 5. We have so much plastic that we should not be using. This plastic is effecting the ocean, animals, people, and our

Much of this trash ends up in the ocean harming not only marine life, but us too. However, this is not only happening in America it’s happening all over the world with China at 8.82 million metric tons of mismanaged waste. All this waste if caught in a gyre, can lead to one of the garbage patches. This has been happening since we started using plastic but it the garbage patches were discovered in the early 1990’s. We keep throwing trash away that keeps being misplaced, then it ends up in the oceans with the rest of the trash. I propose multiple solutions, to enforce plastic bag ban and to enforce recycling. California has banned the use of plastic bags, meaning that if you do use them a fine will be put in place. Environment California explained how before the plastic bag ban California used up to 19 billion plastic bags each year with less than five percent being recycled. However, we can change that. By using less plastic bags we harm the ocean less. Another solution is to each week collect each household’s trash, per pound of trash found in the recycling bin provided by the city should be a $11 fine. Tiffany Edmonds, Solid Waste Management Department spokeswoman, explained why they started the fine “ It is an attempt to change behavior. The fine covers the cost of sending a garbage collection truck to the house to pick up the contaminated recycling bin” this will encourage people to recycle. Since the plastic

If someone says that the area of the floating plastic garbage in the central North Pacific Ocean is twice the size of Texas, will you believe it? Charles Moore, an oceanographer who first came up with the idea of “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, caught sight of plastic trash floating in the North Pacific Gyre when he was sailing from Los Angeles to Hawaii. “I was confronted…with the sight of plastic,” Moore wrote in an essay for Natural History, “It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. No matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments” (“History – Algalita”). Besides the plastic that we can see from the surface, far below the surface, more plastic exists. The plastic is slowly releasing toxic chemicals, harming the water and the marine animals, and finally flows to the human body. Plastic makes our lives more convenient, but without proper treatment, it will pollute the ocean instead; therefore, we should reduce the amount of plastic waste we produce in order to prevent further pollution to the Pacific Ocean and to protect the marine animals.

For thousands, maybe even millions, of years, marine debris has built up on these little islands in the pacific ocean. However one may know it as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. ?The Great Pacific Garbage Patch spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan? (Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Marine Debris is litter that ends up in oceans, and other large bodies of water. This in turn makes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Recycling is a great attempt to preserve our natural resources, but it does not even come close to saving the living creatures of Mother Earth herself. The build up of plastic bags and other unnecessary items in our oceans is a greater cause of ecosystem disruption. An estimated 100,000 marine animals die each year due to suffocating on or ingesting plastic bags. Increased levels of man-made pollutants show up in areas like the Arctic, affecting Polar bears, other arctic mammals, melting polar ice caps and adding to the stress of all climate change and global warming. All plastic bags ever thrown away are stored in landfills, which only some of actually properly dispose

The Pacific Ocean is one of the largest oceans in the world. It's clear pristine waters are visible from the coastline for miles around. As you reach the northern part of the Pacific, you begin to see small pieces of plastic debris. You have reached the edge of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This large region of garbage and other wastes is roughly twice the size of Texas. This trash is classified as marine debris and contains many pieces of plastic and rubber. Most of this trash is non-biodegradable plastic and rubber. This patch was created due to moving ocean currents bringing miscellaneous garbage articles to the center, creating a stable core.

Every potato chip bag thrown on the floor, every balloon released into the air, and every gum wrapper discarded on the sidewalk has an affect on our planet. In the short term we view these acts as miniscule and irrelevant, but what most of us fail to understand is that every act of pollution has a snowball effect that only harms us and our environment. Unfortunately, most of the plastic waste we throw on the floor ends up on our beaches, in our waterways, and in our oceans. Especially in Florida, where everyone is at most 45 mins from the beach, it is not difficult for trash to find its way to our oceans. Marine debris, ocean trash or ocean pollution, regardless of its many names the rhetoric still stands; every piece of litter has a ripple effect that ultimately makes it to our oceans.

The numbers of how much plastic and trash that are dumped into our oceans every year are sickening. According to Julie Mailto (2017) from her website Plastic Oceans, “More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into our oceans every year” (para. 1). Plastic debris in oceans affect more than just simply ocean plants. Around 250 species of ocean animals are affected and are known to suffer from the consequences of severe plastic pollution. Reusable plastics are a great alternative to single use plastics. By using refillable water bottles the amount of plastic waste could be drastically decreased. Not using plastic straws, silverware, and sandwich bags could also lessen the effect of waste in our oceans. Recycling is the best way to cut back on how much debris ends up in the water. I have been recycling since I can remember. If people got paid to recycle then everyone would without question. I believe recycling should be a law in our state because it already is in other states and has been shown to reduce waste pollution so I believe it needs to be implicated in ours.

About 299 million tons of plastic were made in 2013 (Lytle). Plastic waste gained popularity when animals begin to die do to mistaking plastic for food (Lytle). Plastic also causes drains to be clogged and then flooding issues. (Moore) “Global plastic consumption has gone from 5.5 million tons in the 1950s to 110 million tons in 2009,” (Lytle). The overuse of plastic is still important today because plastic is causing many global issues such as draining floodage, animal deaths, and pollution (banthebottle.com). Experts, like Renee Cho, say that plastic is “slowly taking over the country.” (Artwohl). Plastic waste affects the word in many ways. Americans should help decrease this issue by using less plastic

Pacific Ocean. It is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, stretching 10 million miles from

Have you ever thought about how big our earth is or compared it to the amount of water that is on our planet? An astonishing 71 percent of the earth is covered in water. About 97 percent of that water is our oceans. We also have water in our lakes, rivers, glacier caps, and in our air. Now imagine how many aquatic animals live in the water. There is over one million known species that live in these waters and over 9 million that we have yet to discover. Due to trash being dumped in our waters we are destroying our oceans. Because of this massive littering of waste, we have created the great pacific garbage patch which is a vortex of debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large

American citizens throw away millions of tons of garbage each year, and this trash has to go somewhere. While there are projects underway to clean and reuse this refuse most of it gets dumped into huge landfills. These landfills are disgusting festering blisters on our country's landscape. But people continue to consume and throw away more and more in the name of convenience. As they see it, when things get old, throw it away and get a new one. They blame the government for the trash problem, but the truth blame should be placed on themselves.