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Posted 11/03/2025

Somewhere in the North Pacific Ocean, nestled between California and Hawaii, sits the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is an area of trash that's so big it is known as the eighth continent; an incomprehensible, floating-mass of garbage twice the size of Texas, or three times the size of France. The estimated size of the patch is 1,600,000 square miles. Some believe that it is 45% discarded fishing gear, while the other 55% is an amalgamation of other debris, mostly plastic, that has been gathered by currents over time.

It just sits there, polluting the ecosystem and poisoning marine life. It is the result of trash thrown into rivers and streams that flowed to the ocean. According to a 2015 study, the debris was found to come primarily from six countries—China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. In 2024, the Ocean Cleanup Project removed one million pounds of trash from the site, but that was only equivalent to 0.5% of the total, which means there has to be nearly 200 million pounds (or 100,000 tons) of garbage still sloshing back and forth on a daily basis.

Scientists from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) predicted such an event back in 1988 as they examined ocean currents. However, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be exponentially worse than anything they ever imagined. 

*Photo by L. Lebreton, B. Slat, F. Ferrari, B. Sainte-Rose, J. Aitken, R. Marthouse, S. Hajbane, S. Cunsolo, A. Schwarz, A. Levivier, K. Noble, P. Debeljak, H. Maral, R. Schoeneich-Argent, R. Brambini, and J. Reisser