Pacific Trash Vortex: Where lies the world’s largest pile of trash 

We human beings dispose of enormous amounts of garbage every day, but we hardly ever stop to wonder where all the trashes go. Yes, the local garbage man brings in his cart and then disposes them off to a landfill. This is where the trash is either decomposed or is often reused or recycled. However, some objects such as plastic do not degrade that easily and continue polluting our planet. Now imagine, there are millions of landfills worldwide and the amount of garbage is ginormous. Okay, but is there like a landfill that holds world’s largest pile of trash? Yes, there is a single place where most of world’s trash end up in, and it’s in the ocean. Its name? The Pacific Trash Vortex.  

Home to world’s largest pile of trash 
As shocking as it may sound, the Pacific Trash Vortex exists. As the name suggests, it is located in the Pacific Ocean, more specifically the North Pacific Gyre. Also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it primarily comprises of plastic and other items that are difficult to recycle. Well, gyre refers to a large system of swirling ocean currents that are particularly involved with strong wind movements. Now, as it happens, this gyre picks up floating trash from all across the world, especially the human settlements along the Pacific Rim in Asia, North America and South America. In turn, it directs the garbage towards a ‘calm’ centre, where it accumulates and stays on, forever!  

First detected in 1988 
No, human beings didn’t just start polluting and exploiting the planet recently. They have been doing it since the beginning of time. However, in recent years, it has been on an all-time high and with it the growing awareness. Maybe that’s why, even though the Pacific Trash Vortex has existed for centuries, it was only in 1988 that it was officially detected. This was done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US government. In fact, this discovery was part of an ongoing research by a group of Alaska-based researchers who were measuring the neustonic (at the surface) plastic content in the North Pacific Ocean. Being alarmed by the huge quantity of marine debris lying around in the Gyre, the oceanographers informed their peers all around the world and together they came up with the term Pacific Trash Vortex. Since then, efforts have been in place to mitigate world’s largest pile of trash, but so far not much positive change has been seen.  

Undefined size 
As all oceanographers will tell you, the exact size of the Pacific Trash Vortex is impossible to estimate. Some say, it’s almost as big as the USA itself or three times that of France, but most refrain from going into it. Instead, everyone just agrees that it is indefinitely huge. What is known is that it consists high concentration of plastics (of all kinds and sizes), chemical sludge as well as other debris. However, what makes determining its size really hard is that the area has tiny pieces of degraded plastic particles that just float by, often near or below the surface. As a result, it is often difficult for satellites and airplanes to pick up an exact image of its enormity and thus remain invisible to the naked human eye. However, for the sake of putting numbers to it, it is estimated to be 1600000 square kilometres that posits that the amount of trash in the region is six times that of natural plankton.  

As you can imagine, the Pacific Trash Vortex is thus responsible for more than half of world’s ocean-based pollution. In fact, such trash often ends up in the stomachs of marine animals, leading to their deaths as well as disruption of natural habitat.