That Toxic Island you heard about…
May 18, 2008
Searching out the Pacific Ocean’s mythical floating trash heap.
First of all, I would like to apologize to every person I tried to convince about the existence of an actual toxic garbage island the size of Texas state floating on top of the northern Pacific Ocean. It exists, but in a different form. As many of us heard before, this accumulation of marine debris known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, the “Plastic soup”, the “Eastern Garbage Patch” or the “Pacific Trash Vortex” collects in the gyre and pollutes the waters irreversibly. Thanks to a recent video documentation provided by VBS and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, we can understand the magnitude of the ecological catastrophe we have created. The giant garbage patch is not an actual floating landfill, but a ridiculously massive accumulation of plastic fragments that extends for hundreds of miles.
If plastic doesn’t biodegrade, what does it do? It photo-degrades – a process in which it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic polymers, eventually becoming individual molecules of plastic, still too tough for anything to digest.
Take a look to this 12 episode documentary posted by VBS.TV and see it for yourself.
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