I’m saying landfill in the title for lack of another word. In actual fact, for the purposes of this topic we’re going to use the word “seafill”. Of course by that I am referring to the dumping of waste in the oceans, as opposed to giant holes in the ground.
It may surprise you to know that there is currently a ‘seafill’ site twice the size of the continental United States stretching from 
the coast of Hawaii to Japan. As I write, approximately 100 million tonnes of the world’s waste drifts around 500 nautical miles of the Pacific Ocean like a giant soup.
This “flotsam” as scientists call it, circulates the oceans for hundreds of miles occasionally passing the Hawiian achipelego, inundating the small islands with tonnes of rubbish from all around the globe.
This soup of predominately plastic waste which has been monitored for the last 15 years is thought to contain rubbish over 50 years old. Because of circular sea currents, waste is slowly herded into this giant floating continent. No shipping routes pass through it, because they follow the currents around it, so year after year it quietly grows.
The sheer scale of this trash vortex (as greenpeace are calling it) is a disgrace. It is now larger than the whole of the United States, a continent-sized floater. The damage caused by this waste will have heavy repercussions on the planet. Currently millions of bird and marine creatures suffer at the expense of our carelessness. In the long run, so will humans. What enters the sea enters the wildlife, which in turn ends up on supermarket shelves encased in pointless and excessive packaging. Where does this packaging in turn go? That’s a question we all need to ask ourselves.
If ever there was an incentive to recycle more, it’s the thought of arriving at your exotic beach resort and finding trash as far as the eye can see, but that’s what we’re talking about. Much tighter rules are needed about waste disposal. More investment is required in recycling facilities. But most of all, we all need to cut back on the waste we all produce. This seafill could double in the next decade. Unless we learn to be more vigilant in what we buy and throw away, making sure we waste as little as possible, this irreversible soup of rubbish will become a consumer disaster – a toxic tide creeping up on the beaches we love to relax on and into the food we love to taste.
The prevention of this is simple, on paper at least. Its what we’ve been writing and what we still stand by: Use less, consume less and think more.
- For more information on the effect on wildlife, read here. (Courtesy of a friend)
- For the perspective on landfill, see this post.
- Plastic debris in the world’s oceans – report from Greenpeace (pdf)
Nickoli
March 31, 2008
Alarming though this is, you’ve got a couple of facts twisted. Twice the size of the continental United States is bigger than the US, but not twice the size: “continental United States” excludes Alaska, which is big in a way you probably can’t imagine.
Also, 500 nautical miles is how wide it is. The area, according to The Independent, is about 5,911,034 square miles. The Seattle Times puts it at “at least” 523,594 square miles.
The story in The Seattle Times emphasises another reason why this is a problem though: birds are are mistaking the bits of plastic for food, and it’s killing them.
Jeremy
April 1, 2008
Indeed, Alaska is a monster and I’ve added the missing ‘continental’. Thanks for the corrections.
Another interesting thing we left out about this floating waste is the risk of invasive species. Barnacles, molluscs and the like attach themselves to the underside and ride around the oceans, ending up in places they don’t belong and displacing the indigenous creatures.
It’s an all round bad idea, in short.