the Great Pacific Waste Dump

[liveonearth]

The dump is more than one floating mass of mostly plastic garbage that some say is as large as the United States. I guess there are no shipping lanes that go through those parts of the ocean. I wonder if there's any connection between all the floating trash and the increase in ocean-bourne MRSA.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/16-6

Comments

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

I think the bottles are a bigger problem than the bags, because they are more durable, thicker plastic. The more we can shame everybody into not purchasing them, and into re-using them once they are in existence, the faster we'll begin to handle this.

Of course, on the bright side, as oil gets more scarce and expensive we will not be able to afford disposable plastics and the problem will solve itself. That will take a couple or few more generations, though.