As debris from last year’s
tsunami in
Japan now
washes up in North America, much of it is also settling into the Pacific Garbage Patch. Stretching northward from the outermost Hawaiian Islands, this swirling gyre of trash is often estimated to be twice the size of Texas and growing. Now
more debris from the Japan disaster is appearing near Midway Atoll, 2500 miles southeast of Tokyo.
The Japanese government estimates that as many as
25 million tons of waste from houses, boats and automobiles were washed out to sea in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Two-thirds of it settled off Japan’s coast. But the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) has run computer simulations that suggest a
vast blanket of debris will settle across the Pacific from Asia to North America, even reaching the Philippines and Alaska. Most of it will sink or degenerate into tiny bits of plastic that will form a thin film at the ocean’s surface, and one to two million tons of it will settle within the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Read the full article,
my latest on Inhabitat.
About The Author
Leon Kaye
Leon Kaye is the founder and editor of GreenGoPost.com and its advisory division,
GGP Media.
Contact him to discuss how he can work with your organization or event.
His focus is making the business case for sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
He writes for San Francisco-based
Triple Pundit,
Inhabitat and now
The Guardian, for which he writes about corporate responsibility, water, and green building. He has also written for AIA's
Architect Magazine.
Leon works out of Fresno and Silicon Valley, California, and when he has free time, he enjoys hiking, gardening, cooking, weightlifting, and planning his next trip to one of the 60 countries he has visited. He has an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business and is also a proud graduate of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) and Cal State-Fresno.
As debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan now washes up in North America, much of it is also settling into the Pacific Garbage Patch. Stretching northward from the outermost Hawaiian Islands, this swirling gyre of trash is often estimated to be twice the size of Texas and growing. Now more debris from the Japan disaster is appearing near Midway Atoll, 2500 miles southeast of Tokyo.
The Japanese government estimates that as many as 25 million tons of waste from houses, boats and automobiles were washed out to sea in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Two-thirds of it settled off Japan’s coast. But the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) has run computer simulations that suggest a vast blanket of debris will settle across the Pacific from Asia to North America, even reaching the Philippines and Alaska. Most of it will sink or degenerate into tiny bits of plastic that will form a thin film at the ocean’s surface, and one to two million tons of it will settle within the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Read the full article, my latest on Inhabitat.
