Garbage Island is a bizarre phenomenon that is floating in the Pacific Ocean. Its formal name is the Great Eastern Garbage Patch and it is so massive it has formed a floating formation about the size of Texas. What is in this mass? Pieces of plastic garbage from things such as plastic bottles, packaging and toys along with any other type of plastic garbage that is thrown out.
The Garbage Patch or Island is located at a point in the Pacific Ocean that is a natural collecting point. It is at the center of a set of currents called the North Pacific Gyre. This part of the ocean is as calm as a lake due to a few meteorological phenomenon’s of constant high pressure and weak currents.
This is one of the world’s biggest environmental disasters of modern times. The area of that the Garbage Island is located in has always been a kind of cesspool for collecting refuse because of the turning of the currents almost acting like a drain and collecting it all there. The refuse has always been biodegradable and was reabsorbed into the food chain, once making that area of the ocean full of life, that is until plastics came into the picture.
Plastics, which are not biodegradable, are collecting in this Garbage Island, which was once a vital and alive part of the ocean. It was alive with marine life and now it is as vacant of life as could possibly be. Nothing lives there anymore. The eerie smooth flat seas are full of specks of plastics. If you take a cup of water from the floating Garbage Island, you will see thousands of specks of plastic. Each pail of water has what looks like huge amounts of confetti made of plastic.
The island is not an area where a ship would run aground and it is not solid at all. It is a floating mass of plastic pieces that is the size of Texas. To fully understand the scope of this it would be like filling up your swimming pool with plastic pieces so that everywhere you swim you are touching a piece of plastic.
The plastic, especially the plastic bottles, melt in the sun and look like large jelly fish. The melted bottle plastic is gooey when you pick it up. It is a disaster that is very seldom talked about.
Plastic is made with deadly chemicals that are now all being let out into the waters of this floating Garbage Island. It explains why all sea life is gone. The toxic chemicals has taken care of that. To see what this looks like here is a video of what the water looks like: Research Video: Toxic Garbage Island. The video is long, it starts off on the perimeter of the Garbage Island and about half way in you will see the full extent of what this disaster is. This is worse than any oil spill that has ever occurred.
Resources: Toxic: Garbage Island, The Washington Post
