The other day I was channel surfing and caught the tail end of a report on this disturbing find on the Pacific Ocean. The animation included in this post is part of a report by Greenpeace on how the Pacific Ocean is being transformed by the largest runoff garbage dump in the world:

The North Pacific sub-tropical gyre covers a large area of the Pacific in which the water circulates clockwise in a slow spiral. Winds are light. The currents tend to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre. There are few islands on which the floating material can beach. So it stays there in the gyre, in astounding quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton. The equivalent of an area the size of Texas swirling slowly around like a clock. This gyre has also been dubbed "the Asian Trash Trail" the "Trash Vortex" or the "Eastern Garbage Patch".

Who knew there are scientists who have been studying the EGP for years --as way back as the 1950s. What's worse is that there is nothing about this garbage swirl. Cleaning the ocean is out of the question because, where as we going to put the debris? The only two immediate solutions is to limit our consumption of plastic and aggressively recycle what we already have. Better biodegradable plastics are in the horizon but consumption here is what's key in the making of this disaster.