Forced Green

It’s NOT an Urban Legend about the world’s largest plastic trash islands
floating in the Pacific. There is actually two, an eastern floats between
California and Hawaii, and a western located off of the Pacific side of
Japan.  Their combined area covers two times the size of Texas.

100 million tons of free floating trash.  90 percent of it is plastic.
The ocean’s natural currents keeps it floating together. A large current
called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slow moving, clockwise
vortex of ocean current that keeps all that plastic corralled in a endless
moving circular pattern.

80 percent of the trash islands comes from land.  Carried to the ocean
by wind, rivers, or storm drains.

Actually, similar garbage patches have been found all over the world.
In fact, the United Nation estimates that EVERY SQUARE MILE of ocean
contains 46,000 pieces of plastic.

The real tragedy of all this floating trash is the drastic affects on
marine life.  Killing more than a million sea birds and 100,000 mammals
and sea turtles every year.

You cannot just scoop it out, since plastic is a petroleum based polymer,
it doesn’t biodegrade, it photodegrades. That means it just keeps breaking
down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic. So, forget about forming
an ocean-going, green posse riding out and rounding it all up.

At this time and current technology, the unfortunate best solution is to
let it set were it is and slowly keep beaking down to finally the molecular
level. Which will take a long time. A long, long, millieum long, time.

In the event a solution can not be found in our time - to our future
generations - Sorry kids, your elders really let you down on this one.