Garbage in . . . garbage out?

Blind and Crazy?

(Image from The Independent)

I usually stick to my strengths in the subject matter that I discuss here at Gypsy Scholar, but some news is so astonishing that it simply refuses to be ignored.

Islamism may be a problem that we face, possibly even an existential threat as we move into a near future of readily attainable WMDs, but other problems are equally daunting, such as the growing food crisis in poorer parts of the world as prices currently rise so steeply, but what has really caught my attention these past couple of days is a news report that Sonagi linked to at The Marmot's Hole over the weekend by posing this question:

An Ecological Riddle: What's twice the size of the continental United States and contains 100 million tons of plastic?

That link led to an article by Kathy Marks in The Independent titled "The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan." A "tip" in this British context means "dump," as in "garbage dump." Anyway, Marks writes:

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris -- in effect the world's largest rubbish dump -- is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Reflect on that for a moment. Whatever one might think about environmentalism as an ideology -- its tendency to depict apocalyptic scenarios in fearsome, lurid colors -- a 'soup' of plastic twice the size of the United States cannot be a thing to take lightly (assuming that this hasn't been exaggerated, a possibility to keep in mind).

Such debris must be dreadful for animals dependent upon the sea:

According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.

The article does not explicitly state that these birds and mammals regularly encounter the continental-sized mass of floating plastic, but a garbage dump the size of a continent must be difficult to avoid. Even we land-based creatures may face effects from plastic floating in the seas:

Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles -- the raw materials for the plastic industry -- are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

That doesn't sound good, and it's a reminder that we do face enormous ecological problems that have to be dealt with. Perhaps some entrepreneurial soul will figure out a use for all that plastic and develop a means of 'mining' it from the seas.

But I won't hold my breath.