Your shower soap in the ocean

[vixenvixen]

I am currently reading "The World Without Us." It's a non-fiction work that discusses what might happen to Earth if/when humans disappear, what will stick around, what will break down, what will it look like. Today I read an interesting chapter on plastics, which will of course be around for millennia unless some miracle plastic-consuming organism

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[soma_nightmare]

something really freaked me out back in december or january on NPR. I dont recall the show but it was on a weekend (i think). anyway, it was a story about remote places of the world and it featured an interview with a captain of a ship who was out in the middle of the pacific ocean and came across a few meter wide strip of floating plastic bags. he said they took the boat in one direction and a smaller research/life boat in the other to measure the length of this line of plastic. he said that by the time it was getting to be dusk both boats had to turn around and rejoin as no end was in sight (something like a 3 hour tour i would imagine). anyway it turns out that the bags are stuck in the cross current of arctic and tropical water and they dont ever make it to shore. they just mix and float out in the ocean. thats when it occured to me that "holy crap" plastics are everywhere. my car, all over my house, and styrofoam in nearly every take out dish or drink cup around

[vixenvixen]

Yeah, thats one of the things they specifically talked about. Its called a gyre, and it covers hundreds of miles. They say its like boating through icebergs, but it's plastic.