Food Chain Radio News
Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson
Urban Farming Agriculturalist
OUR OCEAN TRASH PATCHES
Is it possible to throw plastic away?
Guest: Captain Charles Moore, Founder The Algalita Marine Research Institute
Out there in the oceans of the world, where the life we will eat sometime in the future, there exists giant patches of decomposing plastic trash that some say are as big as North America.
In truth, these patches, or gyres, are hard to see by the casual observer, or by satellites high in the sky, as they are made up of tiny nodules of decomposing plastic polymers that grow in size as one approaches the center of the spiraling vortex of currents.
Nevertheless, the patches are huge, and cover large extents of the ocean, and so lead us to ask…
To what extent does plastic trash inhabit our oceans?
Does this decomposing plastic trash find its way back into our food chain?
What can be done, if anything, to ameliorate the damage of our plastic trash?
And finally…
Is it possible to throw trash away?
