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Friday, March 23rd, 2018

We underestimated the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—by 16 times

Author:     Zoe Schlanger
Source:     Quartz
Publication Date:     22 March 2018
 Link: We underestimated the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—by 16 times
Stephan:   Here is the latest on the plastic pollution crisis; it is far worse that was originally understood. What is being done about it? Basically nothing; plastic is too profitable; humanity seems unable to stop its own destruction. Your children will not thank you. And their children may live in a dystopian world we can barely imagine.

A trawler pulls in its net and it filled with plastic.

Less than a year ago, the scientific community thought the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was about the size of France. As tends to be the case with bad news about plastic pollution, the reality is worse than we thought. The massive floating agglomeration of plastic debris between California and Hawaii is actually the size of three Frances. Put another way, it’s twice the size of Texas.

toc-gpgp-3xfrance
(The Ocean Cleanup)

That’s according the results of a three-year study published today (March 22) in the journal Scientific Reports, which used new methods to determine the size and makeup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

While other estimates of the size of the patch used a few vessels with nets attached and extrapolated from what they picked up, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, funded in part by the Dutch government, used a fleet of […]

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