A new continent has emerged in the Pacific Ocean, and you’ll never guess what it’s made of...our plastic trash!

Legos, syringes, cigarette lighters, kayaks, plastic bags, footballs, and so on... Below is a list of characteristics of this (not so new) human desolation:

 

-nicknamed the Western and Eastern Garbage Patches or Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or trash vortex, or plastic soup

-located in the North Pacific Gyre, stretching 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan

-the largest landfill in the world: twice the size of Texas

-does not biodegrade: some plastic objects are as old as 50 years

-as heavy as 3.5 million tons

-up to a million pieces per square mile, a ratio of 600 tons of plastic for 1 ton of plankton

-267 marine species are directly threatened by the pollution caused by plastics

-millions of sea birds and more than 100,000 mammals die each year due to the ingestion of plastic debris they mistake for food

-plastics absorb chemicals, such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT, then marine life absorbs it, then we eat marine life and consequently we absorb those chemicals too...

 

Watch Ophrah's video to see it with your own eyes.

 

External links:

The Independent

L'EuroMag