How Big The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Really Is

Eight million tons of plastic winds up into the world’s oceans every year, much of that accumulating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That 80,000 tons of fishing net, bottles, and other trash has more pieces of plastic than there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. And it’s only getting bigger.

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#GreatPacificGarbagePatch #Recycling

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How Big The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Really Is

Following is a transcript of the video:

Plastic is a massive problem that we as humans face and have subjected upon the other beings we share this planet with. In the middle of the ocean lies the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch that shows us just how much this problem has gotten out of hand. Here are some comparisons on how massive the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch is. Following is a transcript of the video.

The world produces enough plastic each year to build 50 Pyramids of Giza. That’s over 350 million tons of candy wrappers, PVC pipes, and synthetic t-shirts. While most of it ends up in landfills 8 million tons wind up in our oceans each year.

Where most finds its way into massive garbage patches around the world. And the biggest of them all is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. How Big The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Really Is. If you picked up each piece of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch you’d carry away about 1.8 trillion individual pieces. That’s ten times more than there are stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. And it would weigh a whopping 80,000 tons. Equivalent to the weight of three Statues of Liberty.

Half of the entire patch is made of plastic fishing nets, lines, and ropes, which come from intense fishing activity near the area. The other half is mostly hard plastics and films, like water bottles and plastic wrap. But don’t let the name “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” fool you. It doesn’t look like a giant mountain of trash at all. It’s actually scattered over a region of ocean that’s twice the size of Texas, according to some estimates.

So if you wanted to pick up every piece of plastic, it would take you 121 days at a walking pace of 5 km/hr to cover the entire area. Though in reality, there’s no true end since the garbage patch is constantly ebbing and flowing with the ocean currents. But let’s pretend you could scoop it all up into one place. There’d be enough plastic to fill 100 Boeing 747 planes!

And the patch is only getting bigger. It’s been growing exponentially larger for nearly 70 years. Partly because once the plastic is there it’ll stick around for centuries. Those plastic fishing lines, for example, will take 600 years to break down.

And even after they break down, the damage doesn’t stop there. Most end up as microplastics that are too small to see with the naked eye. But can make it into the bellies of sea animals and ultimately the humans that eat those animals. Worldwide, researchers have found ingested microplastics in, every species of sea turtle. Nearly 60% of whale species. And almost 60% of seabirds.

Plus, more plastic is pouring into the world’s oceans each day. In fact, experts estimate that by the year 2050 the amount of plastic in the oceans will outweigh all the world’s fish.

Think about that the next time you toss your water bottle in the trash because the recycling’s full.

[checkmyplaylist]

If it was the size of Canada, the people would be *sorry* for trashing the ocean

[trapkingproductions]

Just cause the patch is huge don’t mean we CANT fix it/ pick it up. Nobody just wants to do it. That’s the reality

[Taikamuna]

let me guess it's three times the size of france

[CaptainQwazCaz]

Ok boys let's build these pyramids.

[rererenchon]

People are dumb af to pollute the oceans like this, have they not seen The Simpsons movie?

[dragosdragos]

This is one of the reasons I have depression

[Blockistium]

DO NOT MAKE THIS ABOUT INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. INDIVIDUALS CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEM BUT THE VAST MAJORITY IS CORPORATE IRRESPONSIBILITY. THE WORLD'S CURRENT CONSUMER INFRASTRUCTURE CANNOT BE IGNORED EITHER

[coe]

Instead of standing by and admiring the size of this. Let’s clean it up.

[josephtube]

Everybody please do your part, every little bit helps

[ShortbusMooner]

It's not *pretend.* Just because it'll be hard doesn't mean we shouldn't clean it up..

[jonc]

Its the last line of this video that kills me. What most dont know is that even when you recycle, a lot of it ends up in the ocean anyway. We ship a lot of it away to other countries to be "processed" and most of the time they're just dumping it in the ocean. We've known this for a long time and still we just continue on and act like we are not complicit in the west. We've got to wake up and realize that we shouldnt be producing anything that lasts 100+ years if its useful lifecycle is only a few months at most. Even after these things degrade they are still polluting the environment as microplastics and that just becomes part of the ecosystem. We, along with a lot of other life on earth wouldn't fit into that new ecosystem, I suspect.

[hiimlegcramp]

You know what's Pathetic? Us.

We keep saying "Hey, Stop throwing trash around."But all we do is nothing.


The real trash here is us.

[adamdonaldson]

More needs to be about that. Do people not care about our oceans??

[SmegEgg]

I’m glad for the guy who’s working to clean this up, but also I feel really bad because it’s a LOT.

[SAKSOON]

I get a lot of drinks outside, so I bought some metal straws and carry it around with me, trying to avoid using plastic straws. Say "good job" for me.

[nashanderson]

*now thats a lot of damage*
-Phil Swift

[Mnerd]

Convert trash and plastic into energy that doesn’t harm the atmosphere of the earth nor does it harm the earth’s environment.

[jdubya]

I love how we spend so much time arguing about abortion, gay and transgender issues, and politics but constantly ignore shit like this

[DustinLaGriza]

"Think about that the next time you toss your water bottle in the trash because the recycling is full"
Actually, you should think about it before you even think about drinking bottled water. Even if you put it in the recycling there is a good chance it will end up in the landfill anyway. And why are you wasting your money on bottled water? Seriously, don't drink water from disposable plastic containers.

[braydenculley]

I’m kinda curious abt the sources does anyone know who they were citing on there being more trash than fish by 2050?