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Flux

Flux

SUICIDEGIRL

North Carolina, USA

MAY 06, 2008 05:58 PM

Imagine sailing across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. You are hundreds of miles from the rest of humanity, cruising the North Pacific Gyre, the converging vortex of oceanic currents that covers ten million square miles between East Asia and North America. You might just be the farthest possible distance from any other human on earth. The. Middle. Of. Nowhere.



And you are sailing a sea of trash.



It has come to be known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. At the center of the gyre collects the trash that both Asia and America spill into the sea. The majority is our fantastic plastic, wonderfully photodegradable into tiny particles that, on a molecular level, never stop being plastic. An area the size of Texas (the conservative estimate), or twice that of the continental United States (a more expansive one), in the middle of the fucking ocean, is full of our polymers.



Ocean researcher Charles Moore has been studying the patch for years, estimating that in the center of it is something like one million miniscule pieces of plastic per square mile. (Remember, of course, that this is not just a few square miles but around a million.) Recently, the good folks at VBS.tv, the televisionary subsidiary of Vice Magazine, went on board with Moore to go document "Garbage Island" themselves. Thomas Morton of Vice describes the samples he pulled up with the crew (a merry band that keeps it interesting over the week-long haul to the center of the gyre) as, like, "snow globes made of garbage" -- garbage that is eaten by little things that get eaten by bigger things that get eaten by us. The documentary is absolutely shocking and incredible and disgusting, and I can't recommend that you watch it enough.



This is the part of the trip that weighs heaviest on my mind. It's terrible enough to litter sections of the planet with things that can conceivably be removed_I mean, even oil spills and radioactive dust can be cleaned up to a certain extent. But to fundamentally alter the composition of seawater at one of the farthest points from civilization on the globe is a whole different ballpark of fucking the planet. It's fucking it right up the ass, for good and forever. Without lube.





However, I will warn you in advance that you will get really fucking mad.

Ever since I first heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I have been hyper-aware of how ridiculously and precariously we deal with the world. Humanity, the pack of glorified monkeys that we are, has decided to see no evil. Places that might have never been seen by human eyes are already full of our refuse.



Efforts to clean up the large pieces have been haphazard at best. But the majority of the plastic littering the ocean are the tiny bits so poetically known as "mermaid tears." I can't say I blame the mermaids for crying. Or the albatross for hanging 'round our collective neck. Because by and large, we can't fix this mess.



80% of the plastic in the gyre comes from land; it's not the cruising bourgeoisie. It's everybody in California and Japan who has ever thrown out a plastic bottle or a spork. We are colonizing the sea with our garbage. It is beautiful and terrible irony that this garbage climbs up the food chain so that we end up ingesting it (and all those lovely flavors it has). We are saturating the world and ourselves with our wickedness and then feasting upon it.



While trying to figure out the angle I wanted to take with this article (besides, you know, complete unabashed horror and disgust), the good old Anglo myth of the Sin-Eater came to mind. Instead of absolution through handing sin-tainted bread to the beggar or village fool (or maybe we're all the fools now; I don't know), we are caught in a complex cycle of consuming our own transgressions. We are eating our own sins; they saturate the earth.



Like I've said before; we've got to learn how to sacrifice. As I write this, my adopted home of North Carolina is taking in ballots for the Democratic primary. I console myself in thinking that, hey, at least if Obama doesn't win we'll be one step closer to apocalypse. I don't want to give up on humanity just yet, but if massive catastrophe goes down, at least Mama Earth will get a little break.



And then I realize: God damn, I'm a cynic.



Ever upward, I guess.





Flux is wishing that she had come up with this angle sooner. "A vote against Obama is a vote for Ragnarok" is so catchy!

Squire

Squire

Milwaukee, WI
November 2003

MAY 07, 2008 06:12 AM

I like to think of myself as a fairly well-informed person. But this . . . I had no clue. Thanks?

Oh, and "nurdle" is my new favorite word.

ElizaTheTroll

ElizaTheTroll

Australia
January 2006

MAY 07, 2008 06:28 AM

Holy garbage, that's disgusting.

Thanks for the article. Like Squire said, I had no frakking idea.

Rapid_Fire

Rapid_Fire

Saskatoon, SK
July 2007

MAY 07, 2008 06:46 AM

My first reaction to the article was "I'm going to cut back on the amount of plastic I use!"

But then I realized how much of my stuff is plastic. At least half the stuff sitting on my desk contains at least some plastic.

I'm definitely going to be a lot more careful with the stuff that I buy.

Flux

Flux

SUICIDEGIRL

North Carolina, USA

MAY 07, 2008 06:59 AM

ElizaTheTroll said:
Holy garbage, that's disgusting.

Thanks for the article. Like Squire said, I had no frakking idea.



Me neither. What the hell?

J24U

J24U

Danvers, MA
February 2006

MAY 07, 2008 07:07 AM

I remember seeing footage of the garbage patch about a year ago. Fucking mind boggling is what it is.

Mr_Matt_

Mr_Matt_

Hollywood, FL
July 2005

MAY 07, 2008 07:28 AM

If you want to look at this gyre through a larger lens, I recommend you read The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. The book focuses on what would happen if we all suddenly disappeared.

Long story short, we done fucked up the planet. It is believed that this plastic will continue to pollute the food chain until some organism evolves to the point that it can eat these tiny bits of plastic, as a source of nutrition, not pollution. How long do you think that will take?

coyotemike

coyotemike

Kearney, NE
May 2006

MAY 07, 2008 07:34 AM

People might as well stop having kids, because there isn't going to be anything left for them to eat, drink, or breathe.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

yeah, I know I'm exagerating, but if sometimes feels like it frown

Mr_Matt_

Mr_Matt_

Hollywood, FL
July 2005

MAY 07, 2008 07:43 AM

coyotemike said:
People might as well stop having kids, because there isn't going to be anything left for them to eat, drink, or breathe.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

yeah, I know I'm exagerating, but if sometimes feels like it frown



People should stop having kids because of human over-population, which is one of the causes of the problem.

LeBoucanier

LeBoucanier

Turners Station, KY
February 2004

MAY 07, 2008 08:04 AM

Eventually, we'll all get shrugged off this planet.

Oil, plastic, global climate change, food shortages..... all connected people.


ps- Thanks, Flux, for keeping us informed. These things need to stay at the forefront of our conciousness, so that we don't "out of sight, out of mind".

ki1

ki1

Ireland
September 2007

MAY 07, 2008 08:15 AM

this is just mind blowing. holy crap. i know landfill would be the lesser of 2 evils here methinks.

OpticNerve

OpticNerve

Waltham, MA
November 2003

MAY 07, 2008 08:23 AM

Someone told me about Garbage Island and I thought he ws joking or quoting an urban myth. I wish I'd been right.

You know, ecological destruction won't be solved by science. It's a problem of the human heart, and until we are willing not to let people starve in other countries so that we can grow biodiesel crops on their lands, we are all fucked. Like, prison rape fucked.

Peanut85

Peanut85

San Jose, CA
July 2002

MAY 07, 2008 09:15 AM

I gave up on humanity a long time ago. Somewhere around the introduction of "Lunchables" and/or the concept of bottled water.

It's water. In a little plastic bottle. That costs more than gas. Anyone see a problem here???


erin_broadley

erin_broadley

NEWSWIRE

Los Angeles, CA

MAY 07, 2008 09:19 AM

"A vote against Obama is a vote for Ragnarok"


love it. hahaha....

TAFKASP

TAFKASP

Oakland, CA
June 2003

MAY 07, 2008 09:21 AM

GILLIGAN!!!



(to hell in a plastic handbasket)

SpidersAndArrows

SpidersAndArrows

San Francisco, CA
February 2007

MAY 07, 2008 10:43 AM

Wow. This is quite depressing. frown I hate plastic now.

Eruvande

Eruvande

Sweden
August 2004

MAY 07, 2008 10:48 AM

I am surprise that people don't know, I have known for years and I know Greenpeace has been on about it for some time. You would think this would make the news more often.

Also there are several more.

Astrobouy

Astrobouy

United Kingdom
July 2005

MAY 07, 2008 11:01 AM

This was brought to my attention a while ago, it is trully shocking. The beeb recently featured some stories about it, and awareness over here the UK is growing. One significant contributor is single use plastic grocery bags, which there are now moves to restrict or ban in the UK, though we are definitely trailing others in the regulation of this kind of pollution. And everyone should already be recycling plastic bottles, right?

commonman

commonman

Baltimore, MD
August 2003

MAY 07, 2008 11:24 AM

The things that we humans do to the sea are truly horrifying. Especially becasue there's really no good reason for it, it's just our laziness and greed. Dragnets that scrape the sea floor and destroy all living things on it (which the fishing industry calls "bycatch" and just throws back becasue it has no "economic value", even though its already dead), pollution by fertilizers and other man-made chemical nutrients that creates huge dead zones of hypoxic water where nothing can live, 100 to 200 million sharks killed every year just for their fins, the rest of the body thrown back into the water (often alive) agan because it has no "economic value." I could go on and on.

Maybe we'll be lucky someday and some naturally-occurring bacteria (like Flavobacterium) will finally evolves to eat all of the plastic that we have littered the world with. Maybe the Earth will be even luckier and that bacterium will continue to evolve to eat humans as well and rid the planet of the pestilence that we are.

livertarian

livertarian

Fairfax, VA
February 2008

MAY 07, 2008 11:47 AM

Voting for Obama isn't going to do shit for the environment.

As long as we leave environmental matters in the federal government's inept, oily hands, we will continue to see this kind of muck spread. The only positive thing to do is what we've always been told: Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle. Don't leave it up to government.

livertarian

livertarian

Fairfax, VA
February 2008

MAY 07, 2008 12:01 PM

commonman said:
The things that we humans do to the sea are truly horrifying. Especially becasue there's really no good reason for it, it's just our laziness and greed. Dragnets that scrape the sea floor and destroy all living things on it (which the fishing industry calls "bycatch" and just throws back becasue it has no "economic value", even though its already dead), pollution by fertilizers and other man-made chemical nutrients that creates huge dead zones of hypoxic water where nothing can live, 100 to 200 million sharks killed every year just for their fins, the rest of the body thrown back into the water (often alive) agan because it has no "economic value." I could go on and on.

Maybe we'll be lucky someday and some naturally-occurring bacteria (like Flavobacterium) will finally evolves to eat all of the plastic that we have littered the world with. Maybe the Earth will be even luckier and that bacterium will continue to evolve to eat humans as well and rid the planet of the pestilence that we are.



Yep, we're a pestilence alright. Vote Obama!

sitar

sitar

Philadelphia, PA
June 2004

MAY 07, 2008 12:10 PM




Flux is wishing that she had come up with this angle sooner. "A vote against Obama is a vote for Ragnarok" is so catchy!



which would be awesome if anyone knew what it meant...
elitist!

coyotemike

coyotemike

Kearney, NE
May 2006

MAY 07, 2008 12:18 PM

sitar said:




Flux is wishing that she had come up with this angle sooner. "A vote against Obama is a vote for Ragnarok" is so catchy!



which would be awesome if anyone knew what it meant...
elitist!



Ooh Ooh! I know! Pick me, pick me!!! Teacher! I know!!!!

RudieCantFail

RudieCantFail

Intercourse, PA
January 2006

MAY 07, 2008 12:21 PM

coyotemike said:

sitar said:




Flux is wishing that she had come up with this angle sooner. "A vote against Obama is a vote for Ragnarok" is so catchy!



which would be awesome if anyone knew what it meant...
elitist!



Ooh Ooh! I know! Pick me, pick me!!! Teacher! I know!!!!



Kiss-ass tongue

Toku666

Toku666

Columbus, OH
May 2004

MAY 07, 2008 01:18 PM

I heard about this in an anthropology class a while ago when we were talking about possible hypotheses for the spread of early apes and monkeys westward to the "new world." Apparently a lot of the grist of the hypothesis is based on the weirdly adapted eco-system (if it can even be called such) of the garbage in the Pacific.

Naturally, it's hard to swallow families of monkeys or apes making the trip on floating debris across an ocean, even given the narrower Atlantic ocean of ten million years ago.

...and speaking of millions of years? That's about how long speciation to select for digestion of microscopic plastic would take. It wouldn't take long for bacteria or the like (and may well have already happened, based on some other research in that area that I've read) but for it to move much higher on the food chain (complex animals that can make use of what the microscopic creatures convert the plastic into) would easily take "a very long time."

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