Did you know that there's a massive island of plastic garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean?

http://www.freefoto.com

Can you believe that? Yes it's true. Plastic rubbish has found it's way to the middle of the pristine Pacific Ocean, and it's not only a few shopping bags. It weighs about 100 million tons and covers 680 000 square miles! This is as big as Spain and Portugal 3 times over. And not only that, it has a name. It's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP).

It's sitting like a big cancer tumour off the west coast of the USA and is causing big problems in  the ocean. It breaks down in the sun into tiny particles and small pieces outweighing plankton 46 times. Birds, fish and sea mammals like whales are mistakenly eating this stuff, thinking it's plankton and other food. It's killing them,as although they feel full, the plastic has no nutrition and cannot digest so it doesn't leave the body or nourish the animal. Apparently 100 000 marine animals are killed by this garbage annually.



Not only that, but this plastic is seriously toxic due to the additives. This is bad for us. Fish that don't die of it are ending up on our tables full of these toxins. Even if you don't eat fish you need to worry. One third of the world's fish catch is being ground up into various types of animal food. Beef, poultry and pigs all end up eating the stuff. And you eat them. Even if you're vegetarian you need to worry. The oceans need to be healthy to produce oxygen for us all to breathe. Yes the oceans produce about 70% of our oxygen, but this will stop if ocean life is killed off.

What to do about it? Stop buying or using plastic if you can. I know it's just about impossible to find anything that's not sealed in a ridiculous amount of plastic. If you have to buy it, recycle it responsibly. By that I mean make sure that your local authority actually does recycle the plastic and not just dump it (this happens, believe me). This ocean cancer is already affecting us all. Do something about it.

You can find this article on my Squidoo page as well - http://www.squidoo.com/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch