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| The area of increased plastic particles is located within the North Pacific Gyre, one of the five major oceanic gyres. Source: Wikipedia. |
So you just shopped from that fancy garment store, and were given a plastic bag to carry your new made purchase back home, or maybe you went out grocery shopping and instead of carrying your own grocery bag or basket, you ask the sabjiwallah to lend you a plastic bag so you can carry the vegetables to your home. Congratulations! You, like many others (including myself) just contributed to what would one day make its way towards one of the largest garbage dumps in the world: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch!
The .. what patch? What in world is it?
The Great Pacific Patch is a large area located in the Northern Pacific Ocean that is characterized by a good amount of marine debris mainly in the form of plastic particles, and other chemical discharges from human activities around the world. Plastic and other dumped particles flow from various parts of the world (dumped into the oceans), and get stuck here due to the lack of currents in this area which makes the area a big patch of undissolved and insoluble garbage and debris. The patch is not easily visible though, as some of the particles are really small to be seen by the naked eye, and some which are big enough to be spotted, are not necessarily floating on the surface of the water, which makes it harder to spot.
How big is this patch?
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| The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 4.5 times the size of India. |
Since the garbage is not really visible clearly to the naked eye, and hence not easy to spot, it is tough to determine how much area exactly the patch is occupying. Estimates however point at a size ranging from around 7 lakh sq. km (more than the size of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh - largest states in India - combined) to around 150 lakh sq km (around 4.5 times the size of India - 7th largest country in the world by area and around 0.9 times the size of largest country by area - Russia).
Is it a problem / How does it affect us?
YES. These plastic particles are consumed by marine animals at the lowest level of food chain, which ends up coming to the top most level, to us, at the end of the day. Small animals and their chicks who consume these face serious hormonal disruptions, lack of digestion and die of toxic consumption. These animals when consumed by bigger animals transfer the problems to them and ultimately by men, who suffer from ingestion of toxic chemicals produced by them in the first place.
Quoting Wikipedia, "While eating their normal sources of food, plastic ingestion can be unavoidable or the animal may mistake the plastic as a food source. Research has shown that this plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide."
Conserving animals would become a major problem and it can be easily seen how this plastic may end up at our own plates one day affecting us directly.
Conserving animals would become a major problem and it can be easily seen how this plastic may end up at our own plates one day affecting us directly.
What can be done?
There's really nothing much that we can do apart from limiting our usage of plastic. However, in this day and age it has become really tough, as plastic has become a very important part of our life. Almost every item that we use contains plastic in some form or the other, whether it is the smartphone you're holding right now, or that swanky laptop by your bedside, almost everything has plastic being utilized in it. To do our own part we can start carrying our own carry bags when shopping instead of demanding a plastic carry bag from the shopkeeper. And trust me, it won't make you look any less cool.
P.S.: A major part or rather the whole article has been made possible due to Wikipedia. Thank you Wiki, you're awesome!