A mother lode of plastic collected during a sort of fishing trip from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been transported to Ogden Point in Victoria for recycling and disposal. The Ocean Cleanup project, a Dutch non-profit working to clean up the world's oceans of plastic, collected the 55 tons of trash over the course of six weeks.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a difficult problem to solve. It is thought to be twice the size of Texas and is thought to be located 2,000 kilometers from Victoria. The first stage of the operation involves dragging a skimming line between two ships, which concentrates any floating plastic. A collection bag is located at the U-shaped end of the very shallow skimmer that enters the water. It is known as a retention zone. Three Greyhound buses can be parked there right now. Joost Dubys, the Ocean Cleanup project's head of communications, described it as enormous. Dubys claims that every 10 seconds, a space the size of a football field is cleaned. The retention bag, which holds 10 to 15 tonnes of trash, is cleaned out every three days.