Trashed: Across the Pacific Ocean, Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere CHARLES MOORE / Natural History v.112, n.9, Nov03

A sobering piece on the enormous accumulation of trash -- mostly plastic -- afloat in the North Pacific subtropical gyre:

Trashed: Across the Pacific Ocean, Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere CHARLES MOORE / Natural History v.112, n.9, Nov03

I used to live in a u-shaped apartment building in downtown Milwaukee, on the corner of Kilbourn and Marshall. The courtyard of this building was a dumping ground for airborne plastic bags. Every time a front came through the city, bags would show up in our trees and bushes. From a distance, I would spot bags, ten to fifteen stories above street-level, floating and spiraling their way across town. Every time I stopped to watch them, the air currents eventually dropped them off in my courtyard, or high in the branches of the old trees along Marshall, and I cursed our littering species.

The next time I see a plastic bottle afloat in the Pacific, I'll have a pretty good idea where it's headed.