estimated 315 billion pounds of plastic in the ocean

[Jeff]

The Fallacy Of Gyre Cleanup: PART ONE, SCALE

Posted on July 05, 2010

Team member Stiv reporting here. I will start by saying I'm not an oceanographer, but I am an investigative journalist by trade and I've spent the better part of four years researching plastic pollution issues from science to policy. What I've learned is that the problem of plastic pollution has very little to do with pure oceanography, and much more to do with waste management infrastructure, global economics/markets, polymer chemistry, watershed hydrology, and countless other disciplines-- in short, any solution, to truly be informed, needs to be derived from a multidisciplinary approach.

However, understanding how gyres work is of utmost important, and there are very, very few experts out there who can speak credibly to their movements. I've spoken with almost all the experts on how the gyres work (most notably Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Nicolai Maximenko advises the 5 Gyres science team), what factors affect how they behave, and what I've learned is that gyres are very difficult to read.

What I've also learned is that the solutions being proposed and applied to the marine plastic epidemic are often, anything but scientific. As an activist, I can get downright angry about the notion of gyre cleanup, and when I see stories in the media about it, it often elicits a visceral response from me. Obviously, this is not a helpful vantage in the grand scheme of things, but the motivation for my response is simple: selling the idea of gyre cleanup to the public actually makes the problem worse. If a barge full of plastic comes back from the gyre, and helicopters take pictures of it, and newspaper headlines read, 'gyre cleanup group's first mission to clean plastic from the gyre is successful,' the ocean is in for a world of hurt.

...

According to one of SEA's leading researchers, Giora Proskurowski, plastic is extremely diffuse and calculating its density is very difficult. If we were to attempt to quantify how much is out there, we need to do some big math. Giora's data states that concentration in The Atlantic gyre is about 50,000 .1g pieces per square kilometer on the surface. If we apply big math to that simply for the sake of getting an idea of scale, we get: 5 kilograms per square kilometer or roughly 11 pounds per square kilometer on the surface. There are 316 million square kilometers of ocean surface. This makes for about 3.5 billion pounds of degraded plastic fragments fewer than 5mm in length on the surface of the ocean worldwide. Again, this is an extremely conservative estimate, extrapolating from a local data set to show the scale in the world. Giora's work, for example, shows that plastic doesn't just exist on the surface, it gets stratified within the water column, close to 90 feet down (not to mention all the types of plastic that sink, too, which is about half of the types manufactured). This estimate doesn't include all the big pieces you find in various garbage patches within the gyres, but we'll leave that weight out for now.

So, for the purposes of argument, let's say that for each of those 90 feet of stratification, there is roughly the same weight per foot. Now we're up to 315 billion pounds in the ocean. For comparison, The Gulf Spill is spewing roughly 2.5 million pounds of oil per day.

...

Now let's talk about the scale of waste. As of 1992, the world (5.5 billion people, which today has grown to 7 billion) dumped 14 billion pounds of garbage in the ocean each year, over half (at least) is synthetics (if we apply this statistic over 40 years-- the plastics era in the limelight-- we get a very similar number to the 315 billion pound number stated before of overall plastics in the ocean). Worldwide, we're looking at 1-3% recycling rates on plastic, a number based on an industry that is governed by supply and demand. The plastics industry produces 250 billion pounds of virgin raw plastic pellets per year. Okay, so now we at least have an 'some idea' of what we're dealing with.

One American's 'garbage in the ocean' footprint is about 600 (as of 1992) pounds annually (if you want to know precisely what your plastics in the ocean footprint is do a simple experiment: throw all your waste in the same bin for a week. Separate organic materials and synthetics. Determine the percentage of synthetics and apply that percentage to that 600 pound number, and you'll know roughly how much damage your lifestyle causes on the ocean in terms of weight.)

Yes, it's bad, and it's overwhelming and it's getting worse, fast....

http://5gyres.org/posts/2010/07/05/the_ ... _one_scale

[Jeff]

[cptmarginal]

One of the craziest and most horrible situations on the planet. The actual number must be very much higher...

Synthetic garbage continents. Amazing that this has only become a widely acknowledged phenomenon within the past couple of years, considering the obviousness and importance.

I'm kidding around by calling it a continent, but something's gotta be a better description than "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"

See also: The Great Atlantic Garbage Patch

[cptmarginal]

Count on Wikipedia to lowball all estimates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre

An accumulation of man-made marine debris, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is collecting in the gyre.[2] A study of marine debris near the center of the gyre as part of the Southern California Water Research Project found 334,271 pieces of plastic per square kilometer with a weight of 5.1 kilograms per square kilometer.[3]. If this 11.2 lb/km2 found near the center were the same throughout its estimated 20 million square kilometers expanse, the gyre would contain 225 million pounds or 113,000 tons of plastic waste. This is less than some estimates of from three to 100 million tons of plastic in the gyre. The estimated amount could be carried by 3 or 4 standard dry cargo ships. 113 thousand tons is less than 0.4% of the 30 million tons of plastic solid waste collected by municipalities in the United States in 2008.[4]

[seemslikeadream]

Break my heart



Raining...raining in the heart
Raining in your heart
Raining...raining to your heart
Raining, raining...raining
Raining to your heart v Raining...raining in your heart
Raining in your heart..
To the sea

Oh great ocean
Oh great sea
Run to the ocean
Run to the sea

[swindled69]

Humans should be ashamed of themselves. This goes on the top 10 reasons for me that we should have an extinction level event and if we fail to come back from it so be it.

Fucking Disgusted.

[barracuda]

Yes, it's disgusting. But hardly insurmountable. From Jeff's link:

We'll also share some good news: you don't need to go out to the ocean to clean up plastic as the gyres themselves upon each full rotation spit plastic out. The North Pacific Gyre, for example, takes three years to complete an orbit and dumps roughly 50% of it's contents (Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Flotasmetrics). This flotsam will either wash up on land or go into another gyre. All you need to do to clean the gyres is pick what washes up off the beach, and stop it from being thrown in, in the first place.

And from the video, "'We need to start producing plastics that are fully recyclable.' She also advocates for passing legislation that makes companies responsible for the end-life of their products."

So the answer to this issue is exceedingly simple, and is rather directly in front of our faces, should we choose to avail ourselves of it.

[ilyinternet]

Anyone else got to the point when they read articles like this and think "good the more the better the more pollution and crap we create the quicker something dramatic will happen". We can't stop(?) the runaway train of western civilization so the quicker a huge boulder is placed on the tracks the better. I'm bored! I want armageddon.

[barracuda]

ily, remember what your mother used to say when you complained of being bored? "Read a book." or "Go outside and play."

It's way cheaper than armageddon.

[crikkett]

Yes, it's disgusting. But hardly insurmountable. From Jeff's link:

We'll also share some good news: you don't need to go out to the ocean to clean up plastic as the gyres themselves upon each full rotation spit plastic out. The North Pacific Gyre, for example, takes three years to complete an orbit and dumps roughly 50% of it's contents (Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Flotasmetrics). This flotsam will either wash up on land or go into another gyre. All you need to do to clean the gyres is pick what washes up off the beach, and stop it from being thrown in, in the first place.

And from the video, "'We need to start producing plastics that are fully recyclable.' She also advocates for passing legislation that makes companies responsible for the end-life of their products."

So the answer to this issue is exceedingly simple, and is rather directly in front of our faces, should we choose to avail ourselves of it.

I followed Jeff's link to the 5 gyres site, hoping to find a massive cleanup effort underway, or at least calls for a massive cleanup. In my opinion "pick up litter" is palliative, a good answer for schoolchildren. Seriously, though, what a feeble "solution"! Especially when compared to the resources that go into, say, mountaintop removal or the construction of the Three Gorges Dam.

The site solicits sponsorships for trawlers, but they're picking up samples, not clearing trash.

[crikkett]

ily, remember what your mother used to say when you complained of being bored? "Read a book." or "Go outside and play."

It's way cheaper than armageddon.

Ha! My mom made me clean something when I complained about being bored.

[annie aronburg]

What happens if the oil and dispersants from the Gulf meet up with the floating Pacific plastic garbage islands?

That could never happen, right?

[norton ash]

Well, it'll mix and mingle with the North Atlantic garbage to some unknown degree soon enough, and eventually meet the Pacific at a much later date.

Unless a rogue hurricane blows sludge through the Panama Canal.

[Alaya]

When I play queen (of the world) for a day, this is the first thing I would fix. About the logistics, if all the great ships of the world hitched up it could they move it? take it somewhere where it could be dealt with?

Why do we not hear of suggestions on how to deal with it? Is it too enormous for solutions?