Indian Ocean Trash By Erik Van Sebilla

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?

The great pacific garbage patch, or garbage island, as many refer to it, is a region made up entirely of waste. It is around 20 million square kilometers (7.7 square miles) in size. This is the result of careless sailors and beachgoers constantly throwing what they do not want to hold on to into the ocean. The litter gets carried through a variety of currents moving in a clockwise direction into the north pacific subtropical gyre. There, it all adds up to form a pile of garbage twice the size of texas.[8]

In Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s 2020 essay “What I Know about the Ocean”, she showcases her argument that society is damaging the Earth’s environment when they could be fighting for a better future on the planet instead. Specifically towards the end of her essay, she begins to list several different causes that people could be advocating for in order to make the oceans better. While there are so many elements and parts of the ocean that she mentions that may be valuable to individuals, the most important factor among those is that society should all be fighting for more justice. The Earth’s bodies of water provide people with life, yet humans continue to harm the ecosystems and pollute the waters when instead, they could make the change to give

Every day, many people around the world dump trash into rivers or off of boats. To them it’s “out of sight, out of mind”, but it’s not that easy for inhabitants of the ocean. As the garbage flows from rivers into the oceans, it eventually combines with the garbage already floating in the ocean and results in garbage patches, which all

Ocean currents corral trillions of decomposing plastic items and other trash into gigantic, swirling garbage patches (Pacific Trash Vortex)

Now that we know how it is affecting us how does it reach our oceans to start with? Some of it does come from ships that are sailing by but 80% of it comes from land. Most storm drains have a common end point which is into our oceans. And lets say Johnny is waking down the street and eating a lollipop and he litters the wrapper. Next thing you know it rains and that wrapper is swept away with the water and into the storm drain. That drain leads into our ocean and that plastic wrapper is going to be floating for a very long time. These systems are all a cycle but the problem is the cycle is a one way street and that trash you threw onto the street will never come back to the street but will stay in our oceans killing marine life.

Unfortunately, according to reusethisbag.com, "Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times." 3. That plastic then proceeds to end up in many different habitats, the ocean being one of the most commonly affected. In fact, also according to reusethisbag.com, "This year we will add 14 billion pounds of trash to the ocean," and that is this year alone.

Trash spreads everywhere even in the ocean. So guess what, everything that lives in the ocean die such as fish, turtles, and even crabs. But that’s not it, trash spread around on land also like rocky mountains, jungles, and even fields and there are animals living on mountains,

A large number of marine species are known to be harmed and/or killed by plastic debris, which jeopardize their survival, since many are already endangered by other forms of anthropogenic activities. Marine animals are affected through entanglement in and ingestion of plastic litter (Marine Debris). Less conspicuous forms, such as plastic pellets and “scrubbers” are also hazardous. To address the problem of plastic debris in the oceans is a difficult task, and a variety of approaches are required. According to research conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, 14 billion pounds of trash is dumped into the ocean each year. That is more than 38 million pounds a day. More than 85% of all the trash that is dumped comes from the world’s merchant shipping fleet. According to the same research, the United States is responsible for an estimated one- third of all the trash that is dumped into the ocean (Amaral). The reason this is still going on is because the majority of the trash that is dumped is in international waters. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that convened in 1982 defines territorial waters and international waters as: territorial waters are waters extending up to 12 nautical miles from a coastal state, and they are considered to be within the jurisdiction of that particular state or ‘territorial waters’ If oceans, seas, rivers or lakes extend beyond international boundaries and are not territorial waters, they are classed as

Research has shown that there is 5.25 trillion pieces of rubbish floating in the ocean and all that pollution is coming from the shore. Plastic bottles, caps and straws, grocery bags, plastic wraps, disposable cutlery, coffee-cup lids are the main items

14 billion pounds of trash is dumped in our oceans each year. Some humans dump trash or waste into the ocean instead of taking it to a landfill. It takes plastic 450 years for plastic to decompose. Many animals can die because they eat trash dumped in our oceans. When waste is dumped into the world’s oceans animals or even birds can get trapped in the waste, and possibly die. Some people might take their plastic to a recycling plant

In the documentary “Inside the Garbage of the World”, the main social problem being explained is that there has been a great influx of plastic and other type of garbage in oceans and their beaches. This buildup of pollution has largely affected the wildlife population ranging from animals on the beaches to the creatures of the ocean. In oceans, what is called ‘garbage patches’, a large buildup of garbage that flow to one area in the oceans, are being created. Approximately 50 percent of all plastic sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor but about 2 times that much is actually already on the ocean floor. In fact, according to the documentary, there is a garbage patch that is to the left of California that is the size of half of the United States. Each year, about 4.7 million tons of plastic goes in the ocean a year and it is estimated that by 2050, there will be another 33 billion tons of plastic added to the present amount. Eighty percent of the current pollution comes from the land. According to marine researchers, twice as much plastic debris is one the ocean floor than it was 10 years ago. In the futures, plastic will break down into smaller pieces of plastic, creating a bigger problem from the habitat. This plastic pollution is one of the leading cause for beach and ocean inhabiting creatures be extinct because animals are mistaking these plastic pieces for food. When scientist began to dissect beach animals such as birds, they discovered that at least fifteen pounds of

Cargo ships sometimes spill garbage, and some of it floats out to sea from the shore. 80% of the trash that ends up in the ocean comes from the shore.

of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the exact size remains unknown. In addition, Doucette warns us that this patch contains more than ten million tons of waste. She describes the area to be a “fetid swamp of debris where tiny bits of decaying plastic outweigh zooplankton- one of the most prolific and abundant organisms on the planet- by a ration of six-to-one”(Doucette). It is now apparent that the amount of plastic particles residing in our oceans is damaging the natural habit and this trash is not going anywhere. Due to the currents in the ocean, plastic particles are

In the oceans, there a 5 large gyres. Each one of these gyres are known to be filled with trash. These gyres are: Indian Ocean, North Atlantic, North Pacific, South Atlantic, and South Pacific gyre. The largest and most known gyre is found in the Pacific ocean, and is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This garbage patch is double the size of Texas and can be as deep as 9 feet in some areas. In 1971, it was suspected that only .1% of the world's trash ends up in the ocean. The projections today are far worse, it is expected that anywhere between 15-40% of the world's trash enters our oceans yearly. What is being done to counteract this? Well, PRI published Two proposals to clean up our oceans of garbage: Will either work? The two theories take completely different approaches. The first one, which is still only a concept, was proposed by Boyan Slat, a Dutch innovator. He believes that his passive barrier collector would be the best way to clean up the trash in the ocean. On the other hand, Marcus Eriksen, a marine biologist, believes the trash needs to stop entering the ocean before the world's focus turns onto purifying the gyres.