Garbage day used to be simple. One garbage can. Everything thrown out. The yard waste went into the compost in the back garden. Plastics? What plastics? Glass, cans and paper in the garbage.
How did it get to be that plastic is so dominant now? There was only an inkling of it in the mid-1950s when Saran Wrap came on the shelves. Remember how it "clings like magic".
It was in 1979 that plastic bags spread to North America. In the early 1980s, all grocery stores switched to plastic bags. By the end of the 1980s, plastic bags were everywhere. Now is is hard to escape plastic. Plastic seems to be part of every product.
We consumers didn't think about this. It was researcher Charles Moore who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" in 1997. It was a chance discovery. They've mapped them all now - there is the Western Garbage Patch which is closer to Japan and the Eastern Garbage Patch which is closer to southern California and Mexico. There really are 5 of them.
The trash pile in the South Pacific is estimated to be more than one million square miles in size - larger than Mexico. But they can't be seen by satellite as they are widely dispersed fingernail-sized or microscopic pieces of plastic. Some of the plastics are over 50 years old. They could have originated from our own saran-wrap or grocery store bags from the 1970s. Or from ships going through the Welland Canal when I was a child. The estimate is 20% from ships.
And the world map now? How strange to have ocean maps showing the many "gyres" of plastic garbage.
I got to thinking about this as the garbage trucks today will come by a few times - to pick up all those separated wastes - with the special plastics bin. I wonder where it really goes to.
Here's an abstract that seems to match the theme of the plastic "gyrating" in the ocean.
