Bold plan to finally clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is revealed
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More than twice the size of Texas, this huge area of ocean is visibly polluted with something like 100,000,000 kg of plastic waste. But one organisation - The Ocean Cleanup - says it’s on track to finally clear this great floating rubbish dump. The non-profit, which has been collecting trash from the surface for years, says the latest version of its technology could successfully clear the patch at a low cost. It’s worth notice rubbish floating in the Pacific Ocean isn’t a ‘patch’ at all. Although it’s often likened to an island, it’s really more like a soup: where plastic trash is diffuse and sprawling, not clumped into a blob. As Vox notes, the idea of one mass of trash obscures the pervasive nature of plastic in the ocean. Much of it has broken down into tiny pieces that don’t always float above the surface - and likely can’t be captured using nets. Whether the videos are accurate or not, the fact remains that the scale of the problem is enormous. Back in 2015, scientists estimated that between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic makes its way into the world’s oceans every year. By 2050, some scientists think there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish.