*related=https://videosift.com/video/The-Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been added as a related post - related requested by notarobot.

Too bad this expertise is not applied to the real world problems. Let's see some gamester clean up the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" - for real.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'How to, TED, Plastic, Oceans' to 'How to, TED, Plastic, Oceans, Great Pacific garbage patch, ocean current, cleaning' - edited by Eklek

This was my first...
http://videosift.com/video/The-Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch

Do you remember your first time

Cheers & Thanks!

In reply to this comment by paul4dirt:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

It's been there for a long while, and it just keeps getting bigger. Ships are actually avoiding it now because it fucks up their motors. You can't find fish in the pacific without some amount of plastic in their stomach.

Also:
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch
http://www.videosift.com/video/Toxic-Garbage-Island-Part-1
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Garbage-Patch
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Seas-of-Plastic
http://www.videosift.com/video/Alphabet-Soup-plastic-in-the-Ocean

And that's just from searching for "pacific garbage"

>> ^Raaagh:
Ugh freaking eck.
one question, it doesnt biodegrade? okay, and it breaks up into little pieces? got it. Which hang around for decades? fine.
But then what happens after the decades?
Do they turn into those sea people or what?


I don't know why they said it like that, maybe because the plastic molecules stay around for so long, but a typical plastic bottle a little less than half a millennium to biodegrade.

>> ^demon_ix:
"There's no proof that global warming is man made"

Yeah, there isn't. Why are you acting so sure about it?

The same people complaining about global warming are the same people who are dumping their crap in the ocean.

>> ^demon_ix:
"There's no proof, they're saying, that it would kill the birds"..........
Who's saying? The same "There's no proof that global warming is man made" people?
Would someone please slap some common sense into anyone that thinks that eating big chunks of plastic is good for any kind of wildlife?


You can eat plastic. It just goes through your system. No digestion occurs, so no toxins will enter your system. Of course, you could choke on it... P.S. I'm a biologist.

Anyway, this whole thing is ironic since people have been touting the values of plastic over paper for years now. Save the trees and all that. If all that trash were paper, it'd be gone long before it got out that far into the ocean. I vote: tree farms, tree farms, tree farms.

"I don't see why people are so friggin shocked. Where do you think the garbage of the world goes? If we're not burying it and building cities over the landfills it's being dropped in rivers, lakes and oceans."

We have a tremendously huge amount of space for landfills... profound amounts of space. The paranoia of the 80's about trash and landfills has been debunked as a child of media hype and activist exaggeration. In addition, we now harvest methane from landfills. When they get "full", they are buried and these fills are managed by people who aren't moronic enough to dump... say... radioactive waste or anything to unsafe that might end up in the water table. Of course, we should fullfill the 3 R's as we were taught. Reduce, reuse, recycle... but we shouldn't sacrifice our reason. Penn and Teller gave a good shake to recycling on their show. I recommend it.

Well, again waste in the form of military. Everything stems back to that, don't it? Cut the spending on the military and the spills will be lowered.

>> ^blankfist:
In the Navy, we used to dump five gallon paint cans (filled with paint sometimes) into the ocean and told to watch out for Grean Peace. In fact, every naval ship throws (or used to throw) their garbage overboard. When we were done doing all that, we also pissed into the water to let Mother Nature know who was boss.
We also took huge recycling cargo bins filled with tons and tons of plastic meant for recycling, and we dumped it in the sea instead. Before we did that, however, we sifted through all the recyclable garbage and pulled all the plastic six pack rings and artfully tied bread crumbs to them before tossing them to the seagulls.
We also raped children and puppies. No, but some of this is true.

>> ^ponceleon:
I'm surprised a certain fungally named sifter hasn't shown up to tell us this is just a "leftist" propaganda film.

Kerry's not talking about it so to him it's neutral.

As HollywoodBob said, they are washed away from streets or coastal areas. also a lot of is from the ships that traverse the Pacific ocean. Over the short 40-50 years of plastic history, all those ships that went around the Pacific ocean pretty much just dumped all the garbage they produced while traveling into the ocean, since it is a "vast" place. What people over that period failed to realize till recent;y is that the "North Pacific Subtropical Gyre" formed by all the currents around Pacific ocean have pushed all the trash into one location forming the "great garbage patch". Since the only way for these man made polymers to degrade is UV ray from the sun over a long long exposure.(No microbes can break down plastic yet) being in the water shielded most of it from UV ray making it takes even longer to photodegrade.


>> ^ravioli:
To me it's not clear how this garbage actually leaves the dumps and ends in the ocean. It's not just stuff left on the beach that's pulled by the waves. It's not just stuff thrown overboard by seamen. It must be transported and conveniently dumped in the ocean while no one is looking. Probably the cheapest way to get rid of garbage, and it's been going on a large scale for decades. Ships travel between Asia and America with marchandise on one way, and have to be filled with something on their return. I wonder if half of all the plastic bottles sent to China for recycling ever get there.
Please AQUAMAN!! We need you!!

>> ^ravioli:
To me it's not clear how this garbage actually leaves the dumps and ends in the ocean. It's not just stuff left on the beach that's pulled by the waves. It's not just stuff thrown overboard by seamen. It must be transported and conveniently dumped in the ocean while no one is looking. Probably the cheapest way to get rid of garbage, and it's been going on a large scale for decades. Ships travel between Asia and America with marchandise on one way, and have to be filled with something on their return. I wonder if half of all the plastic bottles sent to China for recycling ever get there.
Please AQUAMAN!! We need you!!


A lot of it is litter, stuff that gets thrown on the street, that is washed into storm sewers, and then into rivers and out to the ocean. But because the plastic isn't bio-degradable it just lingers and accumulates, some of it has been out there for decades drifting in the current.