Of the 9.1 billion tonnes of plastic produced since 1950, almost 7 billion tonnes have no use. The global production of plastics reached around 360 million tonnes in 2018 and around 8 million tonnes find its way into the oceans every year, with 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of that coming from rivers every year.
By 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish by weight. Because most plastics are non-biodegradable, they can take about 500 years to break down in the ocean. These plastics tend to form together into massive clumps, taking up precious space and polluting Earth’s waters. The biggest of these is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is litter mostly from countries near the Pacific Rim that has accumulated into a gigantic mass in the North Pacific Ocean.
It is made up of two separate patches—one that’s close to Japan and stretches out to Hawaii called the Western Garbage Patch, and one in between Hawaii and California called the Eastern Garbage Patch.
The North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, a 9,656 km-long ocean current, connects the two patches. Together, they cover a surface area of around 1.6 million square kilometres. To put it into perspective, that is about twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France.
What is in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
There are an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 94% of which is made up of microplastics.
Microplastics are those that are 0.05 to 0.5 centimetres in size. They are barely visible to humans, casually travel through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and do not show up in satellite imagery at all. This dispels the notion that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a large floating island of rubbish that people could theoretically walk on. It is more akin to a cloudy soup of disparate garbage moving close together.
However, microplastics only account for 8% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch’s total 79,000 tonnes of weight. The rest is made up of plastics larger than 0.5 cm, most of which is abandoned fishing gear. Fishing nets make up 46% of the rubbish. These larger pieces of trash eventually deteriorate as they are subjected to the forces of nature, but they break down into microplastics that still pollute the oceans.
There are pieces of plastic found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that were produced decades ago. One that was found dated back to 1977, and several pieces come from the 80s, 90s, and 00s.
How did the Great Pacific Garbage Patch form?
Litter in the oceans (called marine debris) comes together because of the presence of gyres. A gyre is a combination of swirling ocean currents that pulls anything in its vicinity. Like a tornado, the centre of a gyre is relatively calm. Once an object drifts closer to a gyre’s centre, it stays there.
The North Pacific gyre formed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, drawing in marine debris over the course of years, and it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration first reported on the convergence of rubbish in the North Pacific Ocean in a paper published in 1988. A yachtsman and oceanographer named Charles Moore then discovered the patch in 1997 taking a route from Hawaii to Los Angeles on his way home from a yachting race, when he and his crew saw the litter scattered all over the water. He then showed his findings to oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who gave the patch its name.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’s Effects
There is 180 times more plastic than marine life on the surface of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This makes it highly likely that any sea creature passing through is exposed to the trash. In fact, plastics are estimated to make up as much as 74% of the diet of sea turtles in fisheries in and near the patch and fish in the region consume 10,000 to 12,000 tonnes of plastic each year.
84% of the plastics in the patch contains at least one Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic (PBT) chemical. PBT chemicals are harmful to organisms across the food web. Humans can even absorb PBT chemicals from eating fish that have ingested plastics from the patch.
The accumulation of plastics on or near the surface of the water can also keep sunlight from reaching below it. Plankton and algae need sunlight to produce nutrients, and that deficiency could lead to a decrease in their population. The fish and other marine life that subsist on plankton and algae could, in turn, dwindle in numbers. Ultimately, that would destabilise the food chain and reduce the seafood supply and increase the costs for humans.
The overwhelming presence of fishing nets in the patch also pose a fatal hazard to marine life. Animals that swim into these discarded nets can get entangled and eventually choke and drown.
In a 2014 United Nations report, the financial estimate for the total damage caused by marine pollution costs $13 billion (£10.13 billion) per year. Of course the real damage in the long term could be far higher than this.
Initiatives to Clean Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Given how much damage the garbage patch is causing, several organisations have taken on the mantle of trying to rid the Pacifc of its trash vortex (or, at the least, trying to reduce it). Let’s look at some below.
1. Algalita Marine Research Foundation
Upon Charles Moore’s discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997, he decided soon after to do something about it. He founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1999 with the goal of educating people about the patch and ocean pollution in general.
The organisation has pioneered expeditions and studies into the patch and other gyres filled with the world’s waste. They have also pushed for policy change for waste reduction and organised groups to spread their cause.
2. The Ocean Cleanup
The Ocean Cleanup has developed a low-cost, passive rubbish-collecting system. Currently, they have a 600-metre U-shaped floating tube that moves with the ocean currents and collects rubbish, including microplastics, with a 3-metre-deep screen that marine life can swim under. It has sensors that signal its location so a ship can remove the collected garbage every few months.
The system made its first successful collection this October. The Ocean Cleanup plans on cleaning 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in five years.
3. Ocean Voyages Institute
Seafarers and environmentalists allied in 1979 to start Ocean Voyages Institute, a non-profit organisation providing maritime education to youth across the globe. They shifted their focus towards cleaning the oceans and raising awareness about ocean pollution in 2009 with Project Kaisei.
The group launched a cleanup mission in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch this June. They collected over 36 tonnes of trash in 25 days.
4. Big Blue Ocean Cleanup
Big Blue Ocean Cleanup started in 2017 with a vision that goes beyond cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The non-profit organisation supports research and tech development in ocean pollution, runs free and open-source educational programmes about the importance of clean and healthy oceans and hosts volunteer coastal cleaning events all over the world.
Media attention and public outrage is beginning to grow, with some countries like the UK taking steps to ban plastic microbeads in certain products. These organisations and initiatives offer a glimmer of hope and but these are baby steps though and only by really focusing the world’s attention on the calamity that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can the outrage be harnessed to effect real policy change from national governments and international organisations like the UN.
Tackling the Problem
The great pacific garbage patch may be the largest of its kind in the world, but it isn’t the only one. Significant areas of marine pollution also collect to form the North Atlantic Garbage Patch, South Pacific Garbage Patch, Indian Ocean Garbage Patch and the South Atlantic Garbage patch. They all pose significant environmental problems and will, if left to persist in the marine environment, have devastating impacts upon global marine ecosystems.
As a company heavily involved in all aspects of Offshore and Marine operations – from Telecommunications and Environmental Surveys to Oil & Gas and Renewable Energy – UTM Consultants is acutely aware of the impact our day-to-day work can sometimes have on the world around us.
We strive to conduct our business in a sustainable manner and are always looking for ways, individually and as a collective, where we can make a positive contribution to the environment through our work. We recycle as much as we can in our offices and use glasses for drinking water (as opposed to flimsy plastic cups). We’ve recently been awarded our ISO 14001 Certification for effective internal environmental management protocols and we’re also incredibly proud to partner with the Big Blue Ocean Cleanup, supporting them in their quest to end ocean pollution.
Whilst the internal steps we have taken are positive, we’re under no illusions that we can and should strive to be even more sustainable. We’re all responsible for the untold damage that has already been done to our oceans, which is why we all have a responsibility to clean up our mess.
If the burden were truly shouldered by each and every one of us – not simply a handful of inspirational organisations and individuals seeking to rid this throwaway world of single-use plastics, reckless wastage and pervasive microplastics – then the world would truly be a better, greener place.
