Particularly Vexing

(Chronicle illustration by John Blanchard)

With all the other important events (stock market drop, gun control demonstrations, Federal budget signing, North Korea, possible trade war) that the Chronicle could cover, your humble blogger was surprised to see the Friday headline Alarming Study of Garbage Patch. [bold added]

The giant mass of floating plastic that has imperiled birds and wildlife between San Francisco and Hawaii contains 1.8 trillion pieces of trash covering an area nearly four times the size of California....

A team of scientists from the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, based in the Netherlands, said the debris field, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, covers about 618,000 square miles of deep ocean and weighs 80,000 metric tons.

Two years ago we commented how scientists weren't certain about how much this massive plastic garbage heap could affect human health. Furthermore, there was some evidence that sunlight and bacteria were degrading "micro-plastic" particles, making the pollution less permanent than had been believed.

Despite greater awareness plastic trash is growing "exponentially."

Researchers said that will continue to grow exponentially unless drastic measures are taken to reduce the proliferation of plastic garbage and litter back on land, and to prevent it from flowing out storm drains into waterways that lead to the ocean.

The huge sprawl of junk is particularly vexing to environmentalists in San Francisco and other eco-friendly population centers in California, where much of the debris probably originated.

More and more of our store-bought food and goods are sealed in plastic. And we wrap our non-recyclable trash in plastic bags--easier to carry and less messy--and dispose of them in the proper receptacle. It's no surprise that plastic waste from California continues to pour into the Pacific.

Hey, but we banned plastic bags at the supermarket. Give us a medal.