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Comment by readams | Hacker News Reader

I think when people imagine these "garbage patches" they picture a floating garbage dump you could set a lawn chair on. The reality is that they are regions of slightly increased concentration of plastic. Here, the worst areas are between 100-500 grams of plastic per square kilometer. That is 5 empty water bottles in a square kilometer.

This doesn't mean that having this debris is a good thing but it's important to get some perspective as the rhetoric here is very misleading.

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Your 'standard' bottled water bottle is more like 15 grams[1], so to use that metric we're talking 6 to 35 bottles per square kilometre.

Personally I'm more concerned about these plastics getting into my food than I am about whether they'll support my chair. We're going to have serious ecological issues long before these garbage patches become visible - or floatable.

[1] http://www.bottledwater.org/news/weight-pet-bottled-water-co...

Unless you're fish poo or bird poo, I wouldn't worry too much. The animal digestive tract is an active transport system operating at the molecular level and reasonably selective about hydrocarbons.

The problem is that essentially any modern polymer product isn't pure hydrocarbons. Consumer plastics rely heavily on plasticizers, which change the physical characteristics of the material. The effect of plasticizers on health isn't really widely understood.

I agree with the OP's point that the headline is alarmist. Though I find the idea of even few dozen coke bottles per km^2 at the ends of the earth pretty depressing.

Between the low concentration, UV exposure, oxidation, acidity, and salinity, I suspect most the stuff is long gone. You almost certainly get more exposure eating off plastic plates, using plastic silverware, drinking from red party cups, etc.

Why is trash ending up in the Arctic, that's my takeaway.

Half a kilo of plastic per square kilometer is a lot for water that shouldn't have any plastic in the first place. I guess it is all about perspective.

It's because of the currents. Have a look at any body of water with a bit of debris - e.g. a backyard pool with leaves on it. It tends to concentrate in a few areas.

It's a good thing in a way; it allows us to spend a lot less clearing it up.

It kind of makes perfect sense that it would all collect somewhere. I presume you've seen a pond or other still-ish body of water where scum accumulates in one spot.

Exactly right. I skimmed the link looking for photos of trash island until I thought critically about it. Especially embarrassing as I majored in geography and remote sensing and know exactly what these studies are like :)

I think when it's describe as an island it's crossed the line into intentional dishonesty.

Yes. And I've seen articles about the Pacific patch illustrated with a photo of a garbage dump with a lot of water in it, giving the first impression of a mound of trash floating in the water. Do these people really not care about their credibility?

Bear in mind that the major garbage patches can be dense enough to cover the surface from horizon to horizon: http://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific... It's still just bobbing trash, nothing like an "island", but we're not always just talking about a few grams per square kilometer.

I was wondering why there were no pictures. Hard to get to concerned about what seems like extremely minimal amounts of rubbish. I'd be surprised if it's particularly dangerous or troublesome for wildlife.

The plastics are not inert and interfere with the smaller organisms feeding in the ocean. Since these form the base of the ocean food web, if their growth is disturbed, the rest of the food chain suffers negatively.

Hang on, in some places the plastic fragments are more numerous than food.

The plastic also tends to gather up other pollutants - PCBs for example - and for smaller creatures that's a problem. And these concentrate through the food chain.

Your usage of the term 'rhetoric' is interesting. Are you suggesting that the perspective we should have is that it isn't a problem until the water looks like a sewer?

Agreed. Somehow I thought there is sort of a plastic island in the middle of the ocean.

200,000 pieces per square kilometer in the North Atlantic garbage patch.

4 particles per cubic meter in the Great Pacific garbage patch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

These numbers refer to microscopic and otherwise extremely small particle size. You're still in "a couple of kg per square km" territory in the denser regions for these other (more famous) patches.

Again, this is not a good thing and has important negative ecological effects. This needs to be studied and mitigated. But we're still not walking on top of floating islands of garbage.

Sure, I'm not trying to say they're big particles.

Most humans would have a hard time to know if they're in the garbage patches or not.

The term garbage patch is probably misleading. Soup is better, but still makes people think you'd be able to see it.

Record levels of plastic pollution found in Lake Erie.

  One sample drawn near the border of Lake Erie's central and eastern basins
 yielded 600,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer

-- twice the number found in the most contaminated oceanic sample on record, Mason said. - Cleveland.com

I mean, even when put in the terms of 5 empty waterbottles per square kilometer is still an astounding amount of pollution.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not. 5 bottles in a square kilometer is practically none.

Maybe we can both agree that the human brain is pretty terrible at judging proportions such as these. I can see both of your points. I'll trust the people who dedicate their lives' work on this one over my intuition, however.

I wouldn't. The "experts" are frequently overly alarming and wrong.

I do understand the importance of keeping a realistic view of the problem - I'm just wondering why with all the open ocean area we don't create massive solar-powered debris collectors. I guess using wave motion is cooler, but you'd think there'd be more innovation to do something that can just go out and "collect".

"Mr Trash Wheel" http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/

Mr Trash Wheel is picking up large pieces of plastic. It would not work out at sea where the pieces are very small.

Check out The Ocean Cleanup: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/

They are doing exactly that.

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