Trash Island

[Pirate voice] Arrrgh, Matey! There be a mystical island in the middle of the sea. Made of the refuse o’ men. 50 fathoms deep it be, and Trash Island they calls it.

[Normal voice] Actually, it’s call the North Pacific Gyre, but if you look up ‘Trash Island’ online, you’re just as likely, as not, to be mislead … even though, it’s supposed to be the same thing.

Here are the kind of things you’ll find: There’s a giant island of plastic garbage the size of Texas—no!—twice the size of the state of Texas, weighing 3.5 million tons and going down up to 300 feet deep.

Our first reaction was: Dude! There’s gotta be a picture of this somewhere! It wasn’t that we were excited about there being a giant trash island in the middle of the Pacific, it was more like morbid curiosity. Like when you drive by an accident, you just… you have to watch.

You’re not gonna find any pictures of a giant, disgusting mound of garbage, or aerial photographs of a new land mass created by us… from our refuse. The best you’re gonna find is a picture of a guy holding a bottle of sample water with tiny little pieces of plastic in it, or a picture of plastic bits on a beach, or water bottles floating in a marina.

It’s nothing exciting, like a trash island. The only picture that we could find that was even close was a thumbnail, but looked like an artists conception of what a trash island might look like.

[Shakes head] Not inspiring.

Referring to it as a ‘trash island’ makes it sound like it’s a continent sized island of plastic bottles floating somewhere between North America and Hawaii. … I must’ve been asleep when we flew over that.

[Mimicking pilot over radio] Good afternoon, this is your captain, if you look out to your left, you’ll see the North Pacific Gyre, also called ‘Trash Island. A monument to how disgusting we are.

[Pirate voice] Soundin’ like a big fish story, is it?

[Normal voice] Even the calculations don’t make sense. Texas is 163,696 square miles. Spreading 3.5 million tons over twice that area, going down 300 feet deep, and you’ll come up with a pretty small amount of plastic per cubic foot of water.

Let’s use a familiar reference: if you cover a football field, which is 57,600 square feet, with one foot of water from the North Pacific Gyre, you would find that there is 0.15 pounds of plastic in it.
I’d call that pretty thin for an island…

[Pirate voice] Arrrr, there be no place to dock me ship!

[Normal voice] Maybe even a little thin for the San Francisco Gate to have called it “a toxic stew”.

[Pirate voice] Floatin’ bits o’ plastic as big as a whale… a whale what’s been blown to bits with a broad side of shotin’ powder.

[Normal voice] So what’s true and what isn’t? The gyre is indeed where the ocean current would tend to pull things, like trash… and we’ve definitely put a lot of trash into the ocean. And I am all in favor of cleaning up our messes, but I’m also in favor of telling the truth, and not exaggerating a story just to get attention.

[Pirate voice] Arrrrh.

[Normal voice] What should you take away from this? There’s trash out there. Lots of trash in the ocean, but it’s not an island.

[Pirate voice] Yo ho ho, and a bottle of… polyethylene terephthalate. Arrr…

[Pirate voice] I been marooned by me shipmates. Sendin’ out a little message, aye. [Stuffing bottle with message] ‘Save me and I be sharin’ the treasure.’
Ahoy! [Throws bottle]

[Normal voice] Throwing bottles into the ocean used to be okay, if it got you rescued, but if all it’s gonna do is become part of some big trash island, you’d better try something else. Or maybe set up a rescue station on Trash Island, y’know, maybe some sand, a few palm trees. Then it’d be good for something.

[holding bottle] Hey! Check it out, I found something… wait a second… [unfolding paper] ooh! Treasure!

Transcribed by: Victoria G.

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