How Can We Help?

Seeing that marine litter begins with us, it is out responsibility, as a society and also as individuals to do as much as we can to reduce and eventually bring marine litter to an end. The severe impacts that it has on our economic and social well beings as a society should also be a driving factor in changing our littering ways and trying to resolve our marine litter problem.

As a society we can do a lot to try and prevent marine litter from becoming a worst problem. One way is to implement and enforce strict laws that would prevent citizens from littering, not only on or close to the coastline but also throughout the country because litter far away from the beaches has a tendency to travel there. More bins can also be placed strategically for proper disposal of garbage. Setting up recycling bins throughout the country and proper garbage collection and disposal should be practiced.

As individuals we there is also a lot we can do. We can practice proper waste disposal habits. Reduce, reuse and recycle the plastics that we use. We can take part in beach clean ups, community clean ups or even when we see trash pick it up. Proper utilization of bins can also reduce the prevalence of marine litter.

Garbage Patches and Gyres

Contrary to the term garbage "patch" used to describe this phenomenon, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not just a patch of garbage floating around in the Pacific Ocean. You might picture this garbage patch to be plastic bottles and other large pieces of plastic floating around, forming something like an island. That is not at all true! Although there are pieces of large plastic floating in the patch, it is mostly made up of tiny pieces plastic called micro-plastics that are usually around 5mm in size. These micro-plastics account for around 70% of the plastic in the ocean. This is due to the breakdown of the larger plastics via wave action and photo degradation. So therefore you can pass through a garbage patch in a vessel and not even know it.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is also not the only garbage patch in the ocean. Garbage patches form in the ocean due to slow moving circular currents called gyres. These gyres cause garbage to accumulate in high densities within it. There are five major gyres that can  be found in the world's oceans. They are the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic and the Indian subtropical gyres. Also, gyres are not the places in the ocean that garbage can be found however, they are just found here in higher densities that in other regions.