For the first couple of years of this page I showed a picture of a man in a canoe paddling though trash to depict the Great pacific garbage patch. I read an online article and was mistakenly sucked in by the picture when I created this page.

In 2012 I was contacted by some students and writers who wanted permission to use the man in a canoe image on their flyer/books, I told them I had copied it from the web. Thankfully, recently a journalist contacted me and subsequently I learned the truth - the great pacific garbage patch is actually non photogenic and the man in a canoe image is actually from a Manilla waterway.

We hunger for a compelling image to help us understand the issue. But depending too much on spectacular imagery can actually limit our understanding. We create islands where none exist, and then waste our time searching for them.

— Andrew Blackwell’s Visit Sunny Chernobyl via deepseanews

Plastic pollution in the form of small particles (diameter less than 5 mm)—termed ‘microplastic’—has been observed in many parts of the world ocean. [In this paper], we show that microplastic concentrations in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) have increased by two orders of magnitude in the past four decades.

— Increased oceanic microplastic debris enhances oviposition in an endemic pelagic insect, Miriam C. Goldstei1, Marci Rosenberg and Lanna Cheng - April 2012.

• Lies You’ve Been Told About the Pacific Garbage Patch [io9 12 May 12]
• Great Pacific Garbage Patch [Wikpedia]
• Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean? [science.howstuffworks.com]
• The Plastiki Expedition [www.theplastiki.com]
• The voyage of the Plastiki [Observer 11 Oct 09]
• Recycled Island: plastic fantastic?
  [Observer 08 Aug 10]
• Why is bottled water waste a concern? [www.filterforgood.com]
• The Story of Bottled Water (2010, 8min) [storyofstuff.org]

Quick Facts on Trash Vortex

• Discovered in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore [Observer 8 Aug 10]
• 2008: 45 kilos of trash per kilo of plankton [Observer 8 Aug 10]
• The floating dump covers an area one and a half time the size of the USA [Observer 8 Aug 10]
• Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans [L.A. Times 2 Aug 06]
• Every square kilometre of ocean hosts roughly 120,000 pieces of floating plastic [UN]
• The world produced 300 billion pounds of plastic each year, about 10% ends up in the ocean, 70% of which eventually sinks [GreenPeace]
• It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement. [Greenpeace]
• 80 percent of ocean trash originates on land [L.A. Times 2 Aug 06]
• The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California (two times bigger than Texas)
• The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii
• Plastic does not biodegrade, no natural process can break it down

You tube clip "5Gyres - Atlantic Garbage Patch" from Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

Where does the plastic collected for recycling in Ireland go?

Please email if you have any additional links or information for this page.