Plastic is, in human terms, forever. Almost all the plastic manufactured in the past 50 years (that’s 1 billion tons) still exists, somewhere out there in the environment. Some of it is recycled, some buried in landfill, and some carried by rivers out to the ocean. Indeed, most marine pollution is plastic, originally dumped on land. Once in the ocean, it drifts into one of several mid-ocean gyres, or circulating currents. There are five of these in all, two in the Pacific Ocean.
Albatrosses breed on Midway Island within the North Pacific Oceanic Gyre. Parents ingest plastic — bottle caps, lighters –floating on the ocean and regurgitate this ersatz food to their chicks. The chicks often starve and die. Chris Jordan’s photographs of dead chicks illustrate the problem.
See Chris’s photographs:
- Chris Jordan: Message from the Gyre
Photo essay of dead albatross chicks with bellies full of plastic. (If you don’t fancy looking at these grim pictures, take a look at the Monterey Bay Aquarium link below, which shows a jar full of plastic from just one bird.) - Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Wikipedia background information on the gyre and its pollution. - Laysan albatross & plastics
According to Monterey Bay Aquarium, 40% of Laysan albatross chicks die each year from plastic ingestion. - The world without us
This book by Alan Weisman includes a chapter on the longevity of plastics and their impacts on the environment.
