digg

Join DiggAbout

Digg Townhall Tonight!
Tune into the live Digg townhall tonight at 5:00pm PST/8:00pm EST.

From Hawaii to Japan: The World's Garbage Dump

independent.co.uk — The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

show profanity settings
expand all
  • VeniceCA, on 04/14/2008, -0/+36To a much lesser degree, but just as disturbing, I see hauge washups of trash along the coastline of Santa Monica, Venice, and Marina del Rey, especially after bad weather. It most likely washes off from land but it's pretty sickening to see a mile long stretch of trash along the beach after every rain storm.
  • dotlizard, on 04/14/2008, -1/+81you know i remember reading about this, big article in the LA times maybe six months ago, then ... nothing. this should be all over the news, we should be talking about it, figuring out what to do to fix it or at least how to stop making it worse. yet i've seen maybe a handful of stories about it during that period of time, and approximately 11,000 about britney freaking spears. man that is messed up priorities right there.
    • goldfishey, on 04/14/2008, -1/+12drop britney into the trash soup? win win! ;)
      • dazparkour, on 04/14/2008, -0/+4Feeding trash soup to white trash...
    • orbit1979, on 04/14/2008, -4/+6Lack of media coverage makes sense. If this was reported in depth and regularly, then maybe people would begin to demand change. That change, although good for most of us, would slightly affect the bottom-line of the super-wealthy since they may have to begin taking responsibility. The same wealthy that provide advertising dollars to the media companies. And for us Americans, let us never forget that George W. Bush reminded us that it is our "duty" to buy ***** (thus creating more waste). In that instance, taking responsibility would be unpatriotic.
    • had3l, on 04/14/2008, -3/+2Seriously though, the best way to get rid of it would be to design bacteria that would feed off plastic.
      http://www.livescience.com/technology/060307_styro ...
      Or we could wait thousands of years until they evolved to a point where they could eat plastic.
      • gabdewulf, on 04/14/2008, -0/+3and then the plastic eating bacteria come on shore and destroy the modern world?
        • bosssmiley, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1Which will by then be the ancient world.
    • eltrev, on 04/14/2008, -0/+3You can't clean it up. It is circulating in a shallow water column, spread over 2 areas of the Pacific. The combined area of which is near the size of the US. It is not a "Cause" unto itself that mankind can rally over. The plastics will continue to accumulate at a rate faster than UV light can degrade them, until man starts using different materials, such as degradable plastics, at which point it will slowly reverse - possibly a multi-century process.
      • bobfrancis, on 04/14/2008, -0/+2You get it, grasshopper - Professor Bob, Oceanography, Scripps Institute
  • protodon, on 04/14/2008, -4/+9Down with Nurdles.
  • FoxOrian, on 04/14/2008, -4/+8I wonder how many of those rubber ducks got trapped in there...
  • reginaldino, on 04/14/2008, -9/+22another man-made creation to add to the never-ending list of mankind's negative impact on the environment
  • mmx2000, on 04/14/2008, -16/+82I've yet to see actual pictures/satellite images of this... and yet it keeps hitting the front page.
    • jazzzman, on 04/14/2008, -6/+18Ditto.
    • Bagos1, on 04/14/2008, -2/+9I would like to see it too...and I wonder why it is not released to the public. And I do think there is something to this.
    • Kcaj, on 04/14/2008, -3/+23You may be on to something here. I haven't seen a single photograph of this. I'm not saying it isn't true... i would just really like to see for my self. I'm sure, if it is as bad as my mind imagines it, a few photographs could do the cause to clean it up a lot of good.
    • pintomp3, on 04/14/2008, -5/+17Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.
    • AceSuperfly, on 04/14/2008, -2/+9I was thinking the same thing, not that I don't believe it but I would like to see it.
    • YouHadMeAtASL, on 04/14/2008, -8/+6If you read the whole article, instead of just skimming over it, you would have read:
      "Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said."
      • Pic0, on 04/14/2008, -4/+14I hope our technology can advance enough in the next few years so that we are able to take pictures under water.
        Maybe then we will have images of this trash island!
      • esteskid, on 04/14/2008, -2/+15or advanced enough to take pictures off the bows of ships
      • mike17032, on 04/14/2008, -2/+8Then take a ***** picture from the damn ship. Its not like Cameras or Ships are rare things here. Is Moore one of the 5 people in the world without a camera on his cellphone?
    • eddy23170, on 04/14/2008, -3/+6give me a break people....where do you think your plastic goes??? It just disappears, right? There is just simply NO WAY all that plastic stuff we don't recycle could finally end up in the ocean. I just don't believe it.....I need pictures........please.....

      i try very hard never to buy plastic...I always by my milk in a carton because I figure that a tree had to be grown to produce the paper...I could be wrong on this assumption.....but have yet to find a conflicting stance...i dunno
    • benbfree, on 04/14/2008, -3/+2This shows some stuff.

      http://youtube.com/watch?v=tnUjTHB1lvM
    • fucknuggets, on 04/14/2008, -3/+9http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/great-paci ...
      watch the video
    • gabdewulf, on 04/14/2008, -2/+1What about sub sonar pics?
    • falkonv7l, on 04/14/2008, -3/+2Before it was between Hawaii and California, now it is between Hawaii and Japan?
    • parasitewasp, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1I live in Hawaii and after storms a lot of garbage wash up on shores, I help clean up from time to time, but I don't see the stuff this guy is talking about, seems like most of the stuff is from boats (plastic bottles, floats, nets, ropes, and wood) I just haven't seen the volume that he's talking about. I'm not saying it isn't there. There has to be better photo evidence than what has been presented so far.
  • iamblueman4, on 04/14/2008, -5/+10Very interesting.

    "Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

    He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

    Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade."
    • mike17032, on 04/14/2008, -1/+13Maybe he should have kept 10 bucks and bought a ***** camera so we had something other than his word about all of this.
    • gabdewulf, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2Does sound like white guilt with oil being a main indegredent to plastic.

      "heir to a family fortune from the oil industry"
    • noahhoward, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2"He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade"

      I hate statements like that. He just found the thing in '97. Since satellites can't see it (and he apparently isn't familiar with cameras) how could he possibly know the exact size and composition now let alone a decade from now. Yeah it's not a good thing but the fear mongering ***** statements these environmentalists make while they pose as scientists do more to hurt any cause than help it.
    • Wrathernaut, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1Of course he doesn't have a camera... the camera is made of plastic!
  • AntoniusMaximus, on 04/14/2008, -6/+17I don't know what scandalises me the most : the rape of an ecosystem, or the blatant disrespect of humanity's cradle?
  • desmondageratte, on 04/14/2008, -12/+5I think this has been on digg for the millionth times already
    • LiquidCure, on 04/14/2008, -4/+4But it's so very prudent that it be made mainstream news, right? Go and play WoW or something.
      • Rippleeffect, on 04/14/2008, -0/+5at least by playing WoW all the time, he's not dumping trash in the ocean
      • mike17032, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1To quote a common WoW saying "Screenshot or it didnt happen".

        We dont need 10 more stories about the same subject that add nothing and still dont have a ***** picture, spam your activism ***** somewhere else.
    • mike17032, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1And not a single ***** picture of it shows up yet.
  • LiquidCure, on 04/14/2008, -1/+7"We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities, and if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us. We're not protecting nature for nature's sake. We're protecting it because it enriches us, yes, it enriches our economy and we ignore that at our peril. But it is also enriching us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally, historically and spiritually. Human beings have other appetites besides money. And if we don't feed them, we're not going to grow up…we're not going to become the kind of beings that our creator intended us to become." - Robert Kennedy
    • Arcesius, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2RFK Jr. is awesome to listen to. I saw him a couple years ago and I felt like things that I was just scratching the surface of before were revealed on a much deeper level to me. He's coming to town (Buffalo) again this weekend, I believe. I can't wait to see him.
  • Stone420, on 04/14/2008, -5/+5Alphabet soup. Ewww

    http://2.0web.tv/index.php?option=com_seyret&task= ...
    • Rippleeffect, on 04/14/2008, -4/+1Looks like we're giving mollusks a place to attach and make a home. Maybe not all that bad?
  • KnightMareInc, on 04/14/2008, -2/+9out of sight, out of mind.
  • circusbred, on 04/14/2008, -12/+42pics or it didnt happen
    • Kcaj, on 04/14/2008, -4/+13Seconded.
    • muckemuck, on 04/14/2008, -4/+33amen.. this is probably the 4th or 5th article I've seen on this and NONE have had pics. If it's so bad, if it's such a huge problem then it should be easy to go snap a pic of it.
      Please understand that I DO think it's this bad.. and we need pics to prove the point.
      • talonstriker, on 04/14/2008, -5/+2Acutally, I recall several of them having videos...as well as pics provided by some users.
    • jaredr672, on 04/14/2008, -3/+1Dugg
    • ontain, on 04/14/2008, -6/+3http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDzLbJfsOLs
      it's under the water's surface so pics from above don't show much because of reflection.
      • mike17032, on 04/14/2008, -0/+6Then ***** take one from underwater....

        This is not hard.
        • ExRe, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1If it is as bad as it looks, I think there is a reason nobody took one from under water.
      • gabdewulf, on 04/14/2008, -0/+6How bad can it be if its not big enough to take pics of?
      • crichards7, on 04/14/2008, -0/+0That was the worst bit of fast-talking craptastic 'kids' journalism I've ever seen.
  • plizard, on 04/14/2008, -10/+9who cares - we have starving kids in africa --- AFRICA!!!
  • Kcaj, on 04/14/2008, -10/+19Pics or it didn't happen x2!!! Omg circusbred, I love you... haha exactly what I came here and logged in to ***** say. I looked at the link... I'm sorry, but a little graph map with no real images dosn't cut it.

    I want to see like a doomsday death swirl of old HD DVD players and Atari Jaguar systems.
    • muckemuck, on 04/14/2008, -3/+3dugg for the Jaguar mention.. lol..
      • Kcaj, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1I think it would have sold better if it didn't look so much like a toilet... lol Wish I could dig up a pic... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum ... Doesn't look so bad top-down view, but yeah... lol

        I wonder what other kind of massively produced - but undersold electronics populate landfills?
      • RainNIU, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1ET Atari video games. Oh wait, they're already buried in the desert.
    • RainNIU, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1+1 for Jaguar. I almost bought that thing, but the controller was a total piece of sh*t. Too bad they didn't have any decent games.
  • TexMexMatt, on 04/14/2008, -4/+3There is lots of energy in waste. Burn it instead. Use it to make electricity or heat. Use scrubber to remove most harmful chemicals in the fumes and its not that bad at all. A whole lot better than this. Its not easy and its not perfect but it beats this kind of stupidity.
    • luciferin, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2They could try ... recycling it instead.
      • TexMexMatt, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2This is a compliment to recycling. In my opinion not everything is worth recycling. Its lot more easier to burn it to create energy which we need. That kind of recycling you talk about I think requires larger investments into infrastructure than just burning it. Build a power station, burn stuff, connect to the grid and you got energy to lots of homes and companies.
    • gabdewulf, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1its supposedly plastic trash which isn't worth burning.
    • falkonv7l, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1Just like playing Sim City............
  • lopla, on 04/14/2008, -1/+19Until a high profile celebrity drowns in the plastic cesspool no one will care.
    • humanerror, on 04/14/2008, -0/+5Luckily we have plenty to spare
    • gabdewulf, on 04/14/2008, -0/+1Or a celebrity takes it on as thier pet project
  • beersnob, on 04/14/2008, -7/+13Buried because this has been dugg multiple times in the last several months. If this problems is a bad as is being reported, can't someone get a satellite shot or shots to show the world just how bad it is?
    • Shadowgamers, on 04/14/2008, -2/+3Ship shots because satellites can't see it V:
  • Shadowgamers, on 04/14/2008, -5/+10Nuke it from space, it's the only way to be sure
    • ShempRider, on 04/14/2008, -0/+2Only if you're in the pipe...five-by-five.
    • x0epyon0x, on 04/14/2008, -0/+2This is a multi-billion dollar garbage heap we're talking about here. Shadowgamers, you can't make that kind of decision, you're just a grunt.
  • JasonCox, on 04/14/2008, -4/+27Wait, is this the same "Texas sized" pile of floating garbage that was on Digg last month that we all though could be some magical island that TPB could take over?
    • billcrestwood, on 04/14/2008, -0/+0I agree... Last time it read.. "twice the size of Texas" .. Now its "twice the size of the continental US"....
      but still, we should all do a lot more "paper" not "plastic"
  • Adlad, on 04/14/2008, -11/+17Funny how everyone is just assuming this is true.

    You have an area TWICE the size of the United States and yet no one has posted a real picture or some sort of area scan? Huh?

    Sounds like a load of rubbish to me...
    • Matt2k, on 04/14/2008, -3/+2There's a movie above and the actual situation doesn't look like a floating island like you might imagine. But when you extrapolate that you can see plastic junk floating by every few seconds from a boat over thousands of square kilometers, you can get an estimation on the actual amount of junk floating around out there.
    • BigMrWiggly, on 04/14/2008, -4/+4http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/great-paci ...
  • Gunsdead, on 04/14/2008, -2/+6"The garbage patch barfs". Sweet.
  • sambapati87, on 04/14/2008, -9/+14Yea I'm tired of reading sensationalist stories about this and never seeing any kind of proof. Is everybody just citing everyone else?
  • Lucas718, on 04/14/2008, -6/+10People keep claiming this thing is out there yet no one has ever produced a pic of it. Maybe Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and Manbearpig are there too.
  • theskyman, on 04/14/2008, -13/+8I have said it before, Earth will be very happy the day man is extinct.
    • BluesFan, on 04/14/2008, -7/+6We deserve every bit of it too.
      • Opiate, on 04/14/2008, -2/+7Ya'll can go first.
      • tenchi71, on 04/14/2008, -2/+5Then go make yourselves extinct if you don't want to be here. Every little bit helps, right? Go recycle yourselves back into our ecosystem.
    • psychotron, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2Well then...start helping Earth by jumping off a building.
    • RainNIU, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1-1 coolness for being the "I told you so" guy everyone wants to punch in the face.
  • HeroicLife, on 04/14/2008, -5/+6Given that there are colonies of sea birds which number over a million and a single sea turtle lays 150-200 eggs, it is far from obvious whether the number of animals killed by garbage has any impact on their population. Animals that survive due to decreased competition may balance the animals killed by plastics. Furthermore, the more drastic the impact on animal populations, the higher the evolutionary pressure for the surviving animals to adapt to their new plastic-rich environment.

    It is conceivable that plastic waste has a beneficial impact on the oceans, as it is well known for attracting schools of fish, perhaps because it forms a base for microorganisms. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that environmentalists were dramatically wrong about the impact of a deadly pollutant. In any case, the evolutionary process will certainly maximize the potential of marine species to take advantage of their new environment.
    • normalkid0615, on 04/14/2008, -3/+0well those turtles are eating cig butts and plastic wrappers, you decide which is killing them. also, woudlnt all this reflective plastic material be heating the ocean EVEN MORE?
  • Pic0, on 04/14/2008, -4/+10I've heard about this 20000 million times, yet I've never seen pictures.

    Pics or it didnt happen.
  • kushin, on 04/14/2008, -8/+2do we have to see an incredulous photograph or video to start freaking out? imagine the amount of invisible poisons that are already in the oceans. ***** plastic.
  • Partyworm, on 04/14/2008, -0/+4Dugg for Futurama coming true
  • tEhKewleSt, on 04/14/2008, -4/+12I'm not digging any of these articles until I see pics.
  • Kcaj, on 04/14/2008, -2/+10With all the "pics or it didn't happen" bandwagon guys (my self included), getting dismissed by the "You can't see it except on a ship, RTFA" smarty pantses... Anybody here on Digg got a yacht or something and want to take a little sail over there, and take some pics with a digicam? I mean, didn't any of the other kadrillion sailors who must have seen this have a camera of some sort with them? No?
  • tao52nyc, on 04/14/2008, -2/+2Well, there are a lot of salmon fishermen in the pacific NW and N. Cal that are out of work - perhaps various governments can pay them to put those big drag nets to good use.
  • crapmatic, on 04/14/2008, -2/+8Every time I see this story about the North Pacific gyre, there are never any pictures. I'm starting to get suspicious now about these "floating continents of plastic".
  • normalkid0615, on 04/14/2008, -9/+0all of the morons saying "if I dont see pics, its not real"

    1. has ANYONE ever seen a picture of Jesus, God, Allah, Buddah, or any religious figure? NO
    2. do MILLIONS AND BILLIONS of people believe still? Yes

    believe half of what you hear, and NOTHING of that you see.
    • analogandrew, on 04/14/2008, -0/+3Ya.... that's because there weren't cameras when Jesus, Allah and Buddah were alive.
      • normalkid0615, on 04/14/2008, -4/+0no cause god and jesus are all around us, and mary appears to some people so does jesus, religious freaks unite and destroy humanity!!!
    • bradtacs, on 04/14/2008, -0/+0Vice magazine did a documentary about it and actually went out to the gyre themselves and has pictures and videos. You can watch them here. http://www.vbs.tv/shows/toxic/garbage-island/
  • cha0sth30ry, on 04/14/2008, -4/+3this is really scary. 80% of our oxygen is made by plankton in the ocean, only 20% of oxygen in the world is made by trees.
    This is much worse than chopping down all the trees, and will probably accelerate global warming
    • Gndoab, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1i heard that 83% of statistics are made up...
    • parasitewasp, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1Calm down useful idiot before you blow a fuse.
  • Wartel, on 04/14/2008, -1/+6I have sailed from San Diego to Hawaii, and from Japan to just about everywhere, putting me going right through this dump about 6 times. I have never seen anything but crystal clear water. No garbage at all. If there was it would have severly clogged our ships fresh water and flushing systems.

    I didn't even see seaweed.
  • Swipecat, on 04/14/2008, -2/+2Why no photos? Using the figures in the article, there's one piece of garbage for each 5 metre square. So the photos would show one piece of garbage. Not very photogenic. And it's still more than enough to **** up marine animals big time. And there's the even bigger problem of the soup of tiny particles - which can't be photographed either.
  • tells, on 04/14/2008, -1/+3Read about this in The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.. He qoutes Moore's research which found 6 times more garbage than plankton on the surface (by weight).. This was in 1998.
  • flink405, on 04/14/2008, -1/+4And yet no one has a single photo of it....
    And if there are no photos how do they know how big it is?

    How many ships sail through it each day or planes fly over it and no one has ever gotten a photograph.
    How many Greenpeace ships are in the area of Hawaii, but yet can´t make a video or take a photo.
  • fani, on 04/14/2008, -2/+2Tragic how we're ***** up the planet....
    Perhaps we should just put this crap on a spaceship and junk it into deep outerspace.... no wait.. we'll start ***** up the neighboring space too....
  • Hetman, on 04/14/2008, -2/+2This article seems to pop up about once a month. But their is never any new evidence that the thing actually exist. Something that large should come up on satelite images or their should be at least 1 photo of it taken by somebody.
  • ensta2, on 04/14/2008, -2/+1Japan is the world's largest garbage dump on land
  • ohhoe, on 04/14/2008, -0/+4Vice Magazine did a huge piece on the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" It's really interesting, and there are videos also.

    http://www.vbs.tv/shows/toxic/garbage-island/ This is the little 'series' of videos on it.

    http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n2/htdocs/oh_this_i ... This is the article.
  • kinseyincanada, on 04/14/2008, -1/+5Ok for everyone requesting pics there have been links of an entire documentary on the subject. here ya go: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/great-paci ...

    courtesy of Mr.BigWiggly
  • vertexoflife, on 04/14/2008, -0/+3Here are pics:
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/great-paci ...
  • govindprasad01, on 04/14/2008, -0/+0I compleatly fail to understand, are we the same human beings,we are always concerned about ,everything our jobs,our lives,our money ,only us. What about nature ,who the hell cares about the mother nature, ultimately we are the cause of all this , wether any kind of pollution ,it is spread because of all us, Everything is being caused just because we fail to act on what we think, we do know the consequences and causes of every kind of pollution, but still we dont act,simply neglecting everything, just to make it easy for us , wihtout even being concerned about the oxygen we are breathing , the sound we are hearing . we want to sit in the illusion of peace , saying we are human beings and we are really concerned about nature , who the hell cares.
  • Rhenthalin, on 04/14/2008, -1/+1well at least its in one place and now we can get it
  • usgovterrorists, on 04/14/2008, -4/+0Do Digg readers know the terrorist United States Government fired depleted uranium rounds in Hawii?

    United States Government are terrorists, war criminals, and horrific liars.

    9-11 was an inside job! 9-11 was a lie! What happened to building 7?

    Depleted uranium is a weapon of mass destruction!

    Play Wall Street like a PONZI SCHEME!

    The elections are rigged, unsecure voting machines & ballots!
  • ohhoe, on 04/14/2008, -1/+2http://digg.com/environment/Sailing_to_the_Garbage ...

    Everyone should digg the video that someone submitted 3 days ago so all the pix or it don't exist people can shut the hell up.
  • DeFex, on 04/14/2008, -0/+3Couldn't some enterprising Chinaman make a skimmer boat that scoops it up and recycles it into more chinese crap to sell in walmart.
  • Fetching more discussions...
    Show 51 - 63 of 63 discussions
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.