For the first couple of years of this page I showed a picture of a man in a canoe paddling though trash to depict the Great pacific garbage patch. I read an online article and was mistakenly sucked in by the picture when I created this page.

In 2012 I was contacted by some students and writers who wanted permission to use the "man in a canoe" image on their flyer/books, I told them I had copied it from the web . Thankfully, a journalist contacted me later the same year and subsequently I learnt the truth - the great pacific garbage patch is actually non photogenic and the man in a canoe image is actually from a Manila waterway.

We hunger for a compelling image to help us understand the issue. But depending too much on spectacular imagery can actually limit our understanding. We create islands where none exist, and then waste our time searching for them.

— Andrew Blackwell’s Visit Sunny Chernobyl via deepseanews

Plastic pollution in the form of small particles (diameter less than 5 mm)—termed ‘microplastic’—has been observed in many parts of the world ocean. [In this paper], we show that microplastic concentrations in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) have increased by two orders of magnitude in the past four decades.

— Increased oceanic microplastic debris enhances oviposition in an endemic pelagic insect, Miriam C. Goldstei1, Marci Rosenberg and Lanna Cheng - April 2012.

• Lies You’ve Been Told About the Pacific Garbage Patch [io9, 12 May '12]
• There Is No Island of Trash in the Pacific [Slate, 12 Sep '16]
• Great Pacific Garbage Patch [Wikpedia]
• Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean? [science.howstuffworks.com]
• Plastic within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is ‘increasing exponentially’, scientists find [Washington Post, 22 Mar '18]
• This is what it's like to swim through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [National Geographic, 22 Aug '19]
• Sources for marine litter [Organisation: cleancoasts.org]
• The Plastiki Expedition [www.theplastiki.com]
• The voyage of the Plastiki [Observer, 11 Oct '09]
• Recycled Island: plastic fantastic?
  [Observer, 08 Aug '10]
• Petition launched to recognise Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a country [Dezeen, 13 Sep '17]
• How much plastic is floating in our oceans? This map shows the global plastic distribution where each dot represents 20kg of plastic. [Dunpark, 11 Dec '14]
• Why is bottled water waste a concern? [www.filterforgood.com]
• You tube clip The Story of Bottled Water [storyofstuff.org, '10, 8min]
• Short YouTube clip 5Gyres - Atlantic Garbage Patch [Algalita Marine Research Foundation '10]
• Is plastic food packaging dangerous? [Guardian, 26 May '13]
• Sea polluted by paint dust [Science Mag, 7 Aug '14]
• Plastic-eating caterpillars could save the planet [Economist, 29 Apr '17]
• New studies reveal that tiny plastic fibres are everywhere, not just in our oceans but on land too. [Guardian, 06 Sep '17]
• So you think those coffee pods you use are recyclable? [The Atlantic, 02 Mar '15]
• But you were sure the disposable coffee cup you use are recyclable, they aren't I'm afraid [BBC Magazine, 27 Jul '16]
• Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans [Bloomberg, 05 May '17]
• The Ocean Cleanup "Our aim is to remove 90 % of floating ocean plastic" [Organisation founded '13]
• Plastic pollution study from Science Advances Of the roughly 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics produced worldwide since the 1950s, about 6.3 billion have been thrown away, according to a 2017 study in the journal Science Advances [New York Times, 19 Jul '17]
• More Recycling Won't Solve Plastic Pollution [Scientific American, 6 Jul '18]
• This Is the Last Straw It’s time to crack down on single-use plastic drinking utensils, the world’s most disposable product. [citylab.com, 5 Jun '18]
• Balloons Are Bad—Should We Ban Them? Balloons are a major environmental issue. When they fly off into the sky never to be seen again, they end up somewhere—usually, in our oceans. “Celebrate with balloons, but at the end, pop them and put them in the trash." [earther.gizmodo.com, 8 Aug '18]
• Plastic in the Mariana trench In the Mariana Trench, the deepest at more than seven miles beneath the waves in the western Pacific, the scientists found fibres in 100 percent of the samples–in every amphipod collected. [National Geographic, 28 Feb '19]
• Precious Plastic that creates new products out of recycled plastic [Organisation]
• Clean Swell Join a global movement to keep beaches, waterways and the ocean trash free. App Store Google Play [Organisation]
• European Parliament Approves Ban On Some Single-Use Plastics, Reduction On Others The legislation calls for direct bans on single-use plastic items such as "plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks or cotton buds" by 2021. [NPR, 26 Oct '18]
• The Dangers of Plastic Pollution to Marine Life [Organisation: Bottlestore.com, Link contributed by a Girl Scout Troop, Apr '20]

• New Face masks, gloves and a new breed of plastic pollution, Aljazeera, 2 Jul '20

Quick Plastic Facts

• Discovered in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore [Observer, 8 Aug '10]
• 2008: 45 kilos of trash per kilo of plankton near the surface [Observer, 8 Aug '10]
• The floating dump covers an area one and a half time the size of the USA [Observer, 8 Aug '10]
• The vast majority of plastic ever made is still present in the environment in some form, 8+ billion tonnes [Guardian, 19 Jul '17]
• By 2050, plastic will outweigh fish in the oceans, according to a study presented at the World Economic Forum 2017 by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
• Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans [L.A. Times, 2 Aug '06]
• Every square kilometre of ocean hosts roughly 120,000 pieces of floating plastic [UN]
• The world produced 300 billion pounds of plastic each year, about 10% ends up in the ocean, 70% of which eventually sinks [GreenPeace]
• It is estimated that 70% of marine litter is on the seabed, 15% is floating in the water column and 15% is what we find on our shores. [OSPAR, 1995]
• It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement. [Greenpeace]
• 80 percent of ocean trash originates on land [L.A. Times, 2 Aug '06]
• The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California (two times bigger than Texas)
• The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii
• Plastic does not biodegrade, no natural process can break it down
• Disposable coffee cups contain plastic [plastic.education]
• Many tea brands use polypropylene in their tea bags to help retain shape, which is a substance that isn’t compostable.
• Contact Lenses Are a Surprising Source of Pollution [Scientific American, 20 Aug '18]
• Plastic particles found in bottled water [BBC, 28 Jun '17]
• A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute [The Guardian, 28 Jun '17]
• The world produces more than 3.5 million tons of garbage a day [Washington Post, 21 Nov '17]

Have you ever noticed a triangle symbol on some plastic with a number inside it?

Where does the plastic collected for recycling in Ireland go?

Register & join a clean coasts group in Ireland

Please email if you have any additional links or information for this page.