Quezi

'I don't care, I'm having fun' (photo by René Ehrhardt CC-BY)

The Eastern Garbage Patch is a name for an area of the Pacific Ocean which has just below its surface, plastic waste and other debris twisting and turning in the slow moving vortex known as the North Pacific Gyre which is caused by the rotation of the currents in the Pacific. Rather like in an eddy in a stream, the rubbish drifts into the middle and is prevented from drifting elsewhere.

This sea of trash is also known as Pacific Trash Vortex or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Estimates of its size varies but some estimates put it as the size of Texas or five times the size off Great Britain. Another similar accumulation occurs of the coast of Japan although scientists are not agreed whether this is a separate area or linked to the larger vortex.

Rubbish from North America and Japan finds its way into the Pacific. Greenpeace states that 10% of all trash ends up in the sea, 20% of this discharged from ships and oil platforms, the remainder from the land. The trash slowly drifts in this swirling vortex, gradually drifting towards the center. Once there, it is trapped. When a plastic bottle is thrown into the Pacific, it can take up to six years before it reaches the middle of the gyre.

Now trapped along with millions of other plastic bottles and other plastic objects it slowly breaks down in a process known as photodegredation. It does not biodegrade, but the pieces get smaller and smaller until they are like dust.

The ecosystem of the area is then affected when marine life accidentally eats the plastic, either killing it or entering into the food chain causing problems to other marine life; there is also the problem of the accumulation of Persistent Organic Pollutants.

An animation of the progress of the trash appears on the Greenpeace website.

There are four other gyres located in the South Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, and it is thought that each have a similar problem.