Pacific’s Garbage "Island" Holds More Plastic Debris than Thought

The sprawling Great Pacific Garbage Patch not only is the largest plastic accumulation zone on Earth but also is contaminated with 4–16 times more floating plastic by mass than previously estimated.
The debris spanning 1.6m sq km, more than double the size of France – contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, new research has been found. This mass of waste is up to 16 times larger than previous estimates and provides a sobering challenge to a team that will start an ambitious attempt to clean up the vast swath of the Pacific this summer.
The 3-year research effort, which investigated the area from ships and aircraft, found that debris larger than 5 centimeters makes up more than 75% of the GPGP plastic mass, with much of that being fishing nets. Measurable pieces of microplastic less than 4 millimeters in size account for 8% of the mass. Around 8m tons of plastic ends up in the oceans every year,
Approximately half of the weight of rubbish is composed of discarded fishing nets. Other items of plastic include bottles, plates, buoys, ropes and even a toilet seat.
“I’ve been doing this research for a while, but it was depressing to see,” said Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer and lead author of the study. Lebreton works for the Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch-based non-profit that is aiming to tackle the garbage patch.
“There were things you just wondered how they made it into the ocean. There’s clearly an increasing influx of plastic into the garbage patch.
The increased levels of plastic pollution in the area—including plastic from the 2011 Tohoku tsunami—could also account for some of the difference, the authors note.
> Shiuly Akter