What is the great pacific garbage patch?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’ is a gyre of debris particles that has accumulated over time due to pollution. It gathers rubbish from across the North Pacific Ocean, including coastal waters off North America and Japan, and becomes trapped due to the currents in the Pacific Ocean.
discovery
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was discovered by Charles J. Moore in 1997 while returning to California after competing in a Sailing race. "I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot" (Wikipedia, 2014). Before Charles saw the man-made disaster, it had been predicted in a newspaper by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States in 1988 that there was a patch of rubbish in the North Pacific Ocean.
How did it form?
Remember that shopping bag you dropped on the ground the other day? Did you watch the wind pick it up, move it a couple of meters and safely land back on the ground. And then the wind pick it up again a couple of minutes later. Do you ever wonder where that plastic bag ended up?
Step 1: You go to Woolworths to do your grocery shopping, and 'forget' to take your environmentally friendly, reusable bags.
Step 2: You go home, finish unpacking your shopping and put all of the 15 plastic bags in the outside rubbish bin. As you are putting them in, one escapes from your hand and the wind picks it up taking it for an adventure down your street. You think about retrieving it but can't be bothered.
Step 3: That plastic bag, is enjoying its adventure, through all the suburbs, until it sees the drain. It tries to stay still, but the wind is too strong and before you know it, it has been forced into the drain of hell.
Step 4: It starts raining, the plastic bag is being forced down the drain and into what's kind of like a water slide.
Step 5: The ride comes to an end when it lands in the North Pacific Ocean. Getting sucked into a fierce tornado, named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there's no escaping now.
And if it isn't eaten by an innocent turtle which would have chocked and died, thats where it will live for the next 20-1000 years.
Step 1: You go to Woolworths to do your grocery shopping, and 'forget' to take your environmentally friendly, reusable bags.
Step 2: You go home, finish unpacking your shopping and put all of the 15 plastic bags in the outside rubbish bin. As you are putting them in, one escapes from your hand and the wind picks it up taking it for an adventure down your street. You think about retrieving it but can't be bothered.
Step 3: That plastic bag, is enjoying its adventure, through all the suburbs, until it sees the drain. It tries to stay still, but the wind is too strong and before you know it, it has been forced into the drain of hell.
Step 4: It starts raining, the plastic bag is being forced down the drain and into what's kind of like a water slide.
Step 5: The ride comes to an end when it lands in the North Pacific Ocean. Getting sucked into a fierce tornado, named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there's no escaping now.
And if it isn't eaten by an innocent turtle which would have chocked and died, thats where it will live for the next 20-1000 years.