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239 Comments
- wannaBdug, on 04/30/2009, -11/+122Isn't this called LA?
- taylorhayward, on 04/30/2009, -3/+57Garbage Patch makes it sound too wholesome. How about, Pacific Butthole?
- Turkman182, on 04/30/2009, -5/+56That's just messed up. Now I'm really depressed.
- Supernova36, on 04/30/2009, -4/+50Can we really call something 3 times the size of Spain and Portugal combined a "patch"?
- gberkshire, on 04/30/2009, -1/+45That is scary. Pretty soon you might be able to walk from Los Angeles to Japan...
- CrankMyBlueSax, on 04/30/2009, -1/+42What density does the plastic have to reach before it transforms from garbage to a resource?
- Velenne, on 04/30/2009, -15/+53I'd heard this was a myth. Any have authentic pics of it?
- dazparkour, on 04/30/2009, -1/+34Once we can start building on it and calling it an island - it's a resource.
- theCreator79, on 04/30/2009, -0/+32The trash is scattered and not clumped together so you can't really take a picture of it.
- celticspringers, on 04/30/2009, -1/+29Plastic photodegrades. It doesn't decompose. UV light makes the molecule chains smaller and smaller. Pretty soon everything in the ocean's food chain, from phytoplankton up, will have ingested plastic. Then we eat fish and seafood and plastic molecules end up in our stomachs. It's messed up.
- vgar, on 04/30/2009, -3/+30Wonder what the Garbage Patch Kids would look like?
- lynchjos, on 04/30/2009, -3/+28This is depressing. Are there any proposed clean-up methods or is this just too big and out of sight?
- walker4bc, on 04/30/2009, -1/+21I think Kramer and Newman could figure out a business recycling this plastic. Anybody have a mail cargo ship - do the math?
- inactive, on 04/30/2009, -1/+21The "exact position is hard to tell"... Maybe it's like the island from Lost.
- owl1, on 04/30/2009, -1/+21http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
- kiwimonk, on 04/30/2009, -1/+20What wasn't mentioned is the hazard it poses to humans.. The chemicals in plastic end up in the ocean and fish we eat. Eskimos who rely almost solely on fatty ocean animals are already noticing birth related abnormalities due to high levels of chemicals. We really need to start using less plastic, recycling more that we do use..
- incacola, on 04/30/2009, -0/+17damn... so what do we do?
- jaybudzik, on 04/30/2009, -2/+19Here's a video - "a minestrone soup of plastic" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLrVCI4N67M
- supakoopa, on 04/30/2009, -2/+18Actually... that sounds pretty cool, I say we keep adding garbage to the patch.
- MaruLono, on 04/30/2009, -2/+16Put it all on a large barge and have it sail around the world for awhile, then build a huge rocket and blast it into space!
- arlok789, on 04/30/2009, -1/+15This is a perfect opportunity for somebody to innovate. Lets build a floating garbage muncher that converts sea trash into clean energy using lasers. Maybe I'm nuts but I try to see socially positive economic opportunity in everything. This explains why.
http://lifeisoverpriced.com/2008/12/its-all-about- ... - calypsoschnitzl, on 04/30/2009, -4/+17I don't get it... In Austria where I grew up, we had 5 trash cans: paper, bio/food, plastic, aluminum/metal, and one for the leftover trash.
How come the 'greatest' country on Earth can figure this out? The US is not a third world country or China. Stop being so wasteful. - life036, on 04/30/2009, -4/+17So if it's not clumped together, that means that it's not really an "island" like they always say it is (not in this article, but in every other one submitted on the subject).
I always wondered why no one could get a picture of this goddamn "island" if it is so huge. - SaudiMichael, on 04/30/2009, -1/+12I thought we dumped our trash in poor countries?
- superkendall, on 04/30/2009, -3/+14A) The patch is actually more like an area of soup, nothing solid (witness "walking" comments).
B) They really should remove the whole "entangle" aspect from that slide. That's a problem with things like plastic bags and rings (though mostly rings) is that if you don't cut them up a bird can get caught in them - but again this soup is not about large pieces, it's about tons of plastic that has disintegrated into small bits and is just floating there as a soup. - nanowerx, on 05/01/2009, -0/+11Why do you assume it all comes from the United States? Currents from Japan and China feed right into this dead zone. I am sure we send our share of plastic to this place, but giving us all the blame is just stupid.
- Velenne, on 05/01/2009, -0/+10Thanks mrpunman and chourobin.
I was denying anything, just passing on my experience on the matter which was until now, nonexistent. I'd only *heard* it was a myth and was wondering if anyone had come across solid evidence of it.
It's called skepticism. I thought that was acceptable on digg. - ruforealz, on 04/30/2009, -4/+14This is why I think people obsessing over their "carbon footprint" is fundamentally misguided... it takes the focus off substantially worse problems with pollution...
I think we're more likely to poison ourselves with regular ol' pollution before global warming kills us all. - m4vtch, on 04/30/2009, -0/+9Unless there's a profit to be made, no one will want to do anything about it.
- supakoopa, on 04/30/2009, -2/+11Garbage Country just sounds a little too badass.
- AmyVernon, on 04/30/2009, -5/+14http://bit.ly/K9zvW
- fasda, on 04/30/2009, -0/+8well with our consumption of gasoline sooner or later we're going to need a new source of plastic.
- coheedcollapse, on 05/01/2009, -0/+8Because most people here are too lazy or stupid to realize that they should be doing something productive with their "garbage". My city has free recycling that allows us to put out two crates on garbage day: one for paper, and one for plastic, glass, and aluminum. Still, as easy as it is, about half of my block participates in the program because simply throwing your trash in the garbage can is "easier".
Same goes for the roads and woods in the area. ***** can't seem to wait for a trash can, so they just toss bags of fast food and plastic cups out their window. Pisses me off. - chourobin, on 05/01/2009, -0/+8http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/capt_charles_mo ...
- kanojo1969, on 04/30/2009, -0/+8There's not a lot of mystery in *how* to clean it up, that's just an engineering problem.
What we don't have is the will to clean it up. And honestly I can't see it happening for a long, long time.
It has a maximum size; the deadwater zone it is in won't get bigger, so eventually new garbage that enters the zone will not fit and will just be carried away into more populated waters. This will eventually lead to much more pollution of our beaches and one day, probably several decades away, we will realise we have to act. - CATSCEO2, on 04/30/2009, -0/+8Its too diffuse to take a picture of.
Right stupidity strikes again. - Rockey04, on 04/30/2009, -0/+7...and send it to a black hole!
- mustache, on 04/30/2009, -3/+10http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505 - Watch this, there's nothing really to take a picture of other than that. It's more like a dense soup. It just looks like water from above.
- lostmessiah, on 04/30/2009, -0/+7@beatitlikacop: Don't be a douche. Some of us do recycle, and even among those that don't, the real problem isn't with the end user. More intelligent decisions need to be made by the producers, not the consumers, or this problem isn't going to go anywhere at all.
Better designs in packaging, more efficient/cost effective forms of recycling, ways to ensure that plastic bags don't blow off of waste management trucks, and stopping shipping containers full of nurdles from falling into the ocean will help. Having a few dedicated bins in your kitchen and a superior attitude will accomplish nothing.
/end rant. - zip000, on 05/01/2009, -0/+7Man that picture of the turtle is messed up.
- ausfahrt, on 04/30/2009, -4/+10Sick. We are all so completely lame. What the hell can we do? We have ***** up ...
- mrpunman, on 04/30/2009, -1/+7http://www.doobybrain.com/2008/02/08/vortex-of-tra ...
There's a video - kanojo1969, on 04/30/2009, -1/+7I would not be surprised if the eventual solution to this problem involves solidifying this mass and creating a real island.
Instead of cleaning it up, make it a giant floating waste management station. Then you can process whatever new garbage arrives and add it to the land mass. 2200 kilometers long is a lot of room to build upwards, you could probably absorb all floating waste for many decades without making the thing any bigger in surface area.
Basically the presence of the island isn't bad, it's the fact that bits and pieces are free to fall off and sink, fouling the waters around it that is a problem. If we built an island on it and processed all new garbage effectively it would cease to be an issue, and we would know that anything you threw in the sea would eventually find it's way there to be handled.
Probably not the worst idea I've ever had. - DWatch, on 05/01/2009, -2/+7"Why is it that anyone who even QUESTIONS the accuracy of this story is dugg down?"
Because most of us have already heard of this problem years ago, and and most of us have seen the videos of the scientists on the boats scooping this crud up by the bucketful. Not just the 'soup' but also larger - rabid3k, on 05/01/2009, -0/+5http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
- mustache, on 04/30/2009, -0/+5http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
- protodon, on 04/30/2009, -3/+8Seriously DIgg is like the expert on this thing because there it is on here every other week. You wanna know what is weird about it? Every time I see something about it, I try to look up images of it and I can't find one picture of this mythical garbage patch. Also it's so immense and unusual you'd think people would boat out to see it or we'd have satellite pictures of it but nope none of that either. Turns out it's so spread out it really shouldn't even be called a patch it has no specific location.
- Bodhinature, on 05/01/2009, -0/+5So anyone who is concerned about pollution is a leftist liar? I think I could make a better case for call you a douche.
- inactive, on 04/30/2009, -0/+4Some enterprising person will find a way to capture (mine) this "wealth" of resources for the betterment of the environment and sell off the recycled resources.
- votic, on 04/30/2009, -0/+4thanks.
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