Great Pacific Garbage Patch of Floating Plastic Comes From Powerful Countries in Asia and the US

The infamous giant "garbage patch" of plastic floating in the vast waters of the Pacific Oceans comes from the powerful countries in the world, the United States, and Asia like China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

As the researchers examined the wastes, they identified 232 plastic debris and located its origin country; it shows that two-thirds of this waste comes from Japan and China, while the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea contribute an 87% portion of the remaining waste, which affects not just the marine life but the livelihood depending on the marine resources.

According to Nature, a study said that these five countries were not major producers of land-based emissions of plastic wastes into the waters but instead identified as major fishing nations in the Pacific.

Accumulating Wastes and Fragments in the Waters

The garbage patch is located in the northern bodies of the Pacific oceans and is also called the Pacific trash vortex; the humongous North Pacific Subtropical Gyre bounds it. According to a recent study, the researchers said that marine landfill is estimated to contain 1.8 trillion plastic pieces.

Based on the scientists' analysis, there are 573 kilograms of hard, dry plastics debris from the advocacy drive from The Ocean Cleanup organization in 2019, and a quarter of the said number is composed of fragments from (ALDFG) 'abandoned lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear.'

That debris became a 'great patch' because of accumulating nonbiodegradable wastes, particularly plastics that tend to break down into tinier remains, making it very difficult to be seen by the human eye, which is called microplastics.

Shrinking Wastes Into Ocean Floors

Since the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too hard to trawl, no one knows the deepness of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Furthermore, denser debris can shrink inches or even several feet beneath the water surface, making the marine landfill size nearly impossible to be measured.

In a 2018 study about the Garbage Patch, the researchers found that nearly half of the patch's mass is made up of synthetic fishing nets, indicating increased fishing activities in the bodies of water.

Plastic is known for being malleable and durable, so more consumers still choose the material for their industrial products. The plastic is not biodegradable, but it will just break into pieces as it floats in the ocean because of the sun's heat calling this process photodegradation.

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Medicating the Garbage Patch

The patch was discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, igniting his vision to raise awareness; he created an environmental organization named Algalita Marine Research Foundation.

Other organizations have tried to lessen the garbage in the Pacific trash vortex, but it's not as easy as it sounds. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program said that an estimated 67 ships could clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean in a whole year.

Scientists and ocean explorers had a mutual agreement on eliminating the use of disposable plastics and hyping people to use biodegradable materials to clean up the marine landfill.

Raising awareness on social platforms is another way of voicing out about the global dilemma; this is one of the main advocacies of organizations like the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Oceans Foundation.