You’re using the Pacific Ocean as a trashcan. How can you stop it?
Think about the products you’ve used today. How many of them ended up in the trash, or will once you finish using them? The answer is a lot more than you think. For an entire day, I wrote down everything I used, from bathroom products to school supplies, and I found that more items were destined for the trashcan than I expected.
But I recycle, so I can’t be contributing to the large-scale pollution problem, right? Wrong. Recycling alone is not enough to combat our global waste issue. By tossing single-use plastics and other waste products into the trash, we are all contributing to a massive global garbage problem.
By now, you’re probably wondering how your trashcan full of waste is contributing to the Pacific Ocean at all, especially if you don’t live anywhere near it. The Pacific Ocean is home to a mass of plastic debris stuck in oceanic currents known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The world’s oceans are made up of currents that pull hot and cold water in a cycle to different regions of the oceans. The GPGP is located right above a current convergence zone, where several currents come together, bringing warm water from the South Pacific and cold water from the Arctic together. The large currents that keep the GPGP in place are known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Along with the warm and cold water these currents bring along any debris in the ocean. This debris is often plastic because it is not biodegradable and stays intact while battling the currents.
The debris is not just found on the surface of the ocean, however. The currents pull warm water up and cold water down, and the debris follows this pattern as well. A lot of plastic waste is found on the ocean floor in addition to the ocean surface.
Why is it mainly plastic?
Plastic is not biodegradable, meaning that it will not break down fully no matter how long it spends in the rough currents of the ocean. It will, however, break down into microscopic pieces, known as microplastics.
Microplastics are damaging to ocean ecosystems and can even end up back on your table. Microscopic marine organisms often ingest microplastics, and eventually they are eaten by a large organism in the marine food chain. It is only a matter of time in this cycle before many fish who have ingested microplastics are caught by fishermen and are sold to consumers. Your seafood is likely to have ingested a large amount of microplastics
What can be done?
Chances are, you don’t want to ingest microplastics the next time you have seafood for dinner, and you’re not a big fan of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch either. The issue with cleaning up the Garbage Patch is two-fold. First is responsibility. Due to its location — in the middle of the Pacific Ocean outside of any national territory — no nation has claimed responsibility for cleaning up the patch, and no nation likely ever will. It has been estimated by the man who discovered the vortex causing the patch, Charles Moore, that the expense to clean up the patch alone would bankrupt any nation who dared to try. This leaves the cleanup to be led by private individuals and companies interested in the project. And many are. The second issue comes into play here. The existence of microplastics makes the cleanup nearly impossible to happen fully. No nets exist that can capture microplastics, and even if one was developed, the size of the patch alone makes it nearly impossible. While much is being done to slowly clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a systemic change will be necessary to address our pollution issue.
This is where you come in! Experts recommend that the most reasonable and possible solution to this issue is limiting our plastic usage and restricting how much waste ends up in the oceans. Clean up may be nearly impossible to fully achieve, but we can limit the number of plastics that can end up contributing to the GPGP. You can do this by switching items that are often single-use plastics out for reusable products. Limiting the amount of waste you create is a great way to single-handedly play a role in the betterment of our ecosystems.
Get started by making a list of all the products you use in a day. Note anything that is a plastic, especially if it is single-use, and research reusable or sustainable products that you could switch to in the future. You can also implement more frequent reuse of plastic items you would have normally thrown away.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only one example of how dangerous our plastic usage is damaging the environment. By taking personal actions to prevent plastics from entering our ecosystems, you are preventing issues like this one from becoming worse, and new ones from forming.
