Oprah Shines Light On Great Pacific Garbage Patch (VIDEO)

[Pharaoh]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23/oprah-shines-light-on-gre_n_190552.html




Oprah's green episode for Earth Day started with chilling footage and description of a giant island of trash -- "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch".

Currently, scientists believe the world's largest garbage dump isn't on land...it's in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches from the coast of California to Japan, and it's estimated to be twice the size of Texas. "This is the most shocking thing I have seen," Oprah says.

Just a month ago, the Natural Resource Defense Council's Kate Slusark blogged here at HuffPost Green about the giant oceanic trash dump:

To give you a little background: Years of bottles, bags, toys, packaging and plastic trash from all corners of the Earth are swirling in a plastic whirlpool in the North Pacific. Discarded water bottles from Iowa, takeout containers from New York City, flip-flops from California and plastic debris from the world over make their way from land into storm drains, streams, rivers and other waterways. They are carried out sea, where they get trapped in swirling ocean currents - forming a giant, floating trash dump of an enormous proportion - no matter how you quantify it.

[and-justice-for-all]

1. That's just awful...nt

[ixion]

2. We have the capability to clean up our mess

but I'm sure we'll just focus our resources on more important things, like wars in foreign lands and jailing pot smokers. :(

[Pharaoh]

3. We could use all those idle

fishing trawlers (because we the oceans are being fished out) to pick that stuff up. But of course there would be no profit in it so nobody gives a fuck.

[Skidmore]

5. Wonder how we could get that sent on.

And surely we could boost efforts to expand recycling. I don't really understand how plastic is recycled and for what but we need more recycling and less production of new plastic.

[msongs]

4. wonder how many products advertised in her magazine are in that "patch". nt

[LostinVA]

6. The NRDC is great -- donate if you can