The New York Times ran an Opinion page article by Charles J. Moore on August 25, 2014. This is a must-read article on Moore's return visit to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
"I was utterly shocked to see the enormous increase in the quantity of plastic waste since my last trip in 2009," writes Moore.
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| by Alec Doherty |
Excerpts from the article:
The world is awash in plastic. It’s in our cars and our carpets, we wrap it around the food we eat and virtually every other product we consume; it has become a key lubricant of globalization — but it’s choking our future in ways that most of us are barely aware.
Plastics are now one of the most common pollutants of ocean waters worldwide. Pushed by winds, tides and currents, plastic particles form with other debris into large swirling glutinous accumulation zones, known to oceanographers as gyres, which comprise as much as 40 percent of the planet’s ocean surface — roughly 25 percent of the entire earth.
The reality is that only by preventing synthetic debris — most of which is disposable plastic — from getting into the ocean in the first place will a measurable reduction in the ocean’s plastic load be accomplished. Clean-up schemes are legion, but have never been put into practice in the garbage patches.
Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/opinion/choking-the-oceans-with-plastic.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0
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