This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a worthwhile article about plastic in the oceans today. The problem is especially alarming in the North Pacific where The North Pacific Gyre, one of five naturally occurring ocean Gyres in the world, causes plastic to accumulate at high concentrations as it rotates in the 5 ocean gyres North Pacific.

Differing Approaches

The article highlights a number of approaches being taken in the environmental community to respond to the crisis.

The mission of the International Coastal Cleanup, an annual project to clean beaches across the world, is focused on raising awareness of the problem by educating volunteers. Other organizations, like GoAK which recently completed a months long project to clean the shore of Alaska’s Gore Point, aim to begin the immense work of actually cleaning up the plastic piece by piece.

Charles Moore, who’s work is also discussed in the article, has been conducting research in the famed “Garbage Patch” reported to be the size of Texas at the heart of the Gyre. I discovered a 12 part video series project that he captained recently along with a professor from the University of Missouri in a post from Social Butterfly.

Also check out this embedded video of some of Moore’s work.

All of this has me thinking much more seriously about where the stuff we throw out winds up. Most of that plastic comes from cities dumping their trash directly into the ocean rather than individuals tossing things overboard from ships and piers. The city of Los Angeles is considering a plan to stop all dumping by the year 2016! That’s great, but what does that mean about what we’re dumping now? We don’t know what happens to our trash. It’s burned, buried, and dumped who knows where, but it still has a consequence somewhere.

Are you blown away as much as I am? Does it make you want to recycle more? Start using permanent bottles and tap water more? I’m curious what people think so do share in the comments.