Great Pacific Garbage Patch from space

This is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from space. “Trash island” is a nickname for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive area in the Pacific Ocean where huge amounts of plastic waste and debris have accumulated.

Despite the name, it’s not actually a solid island you could stand on. Instead, it’s more like a vast, diffuse soup of floating trash, mostly tiny plastic fragments called microplastics, mixed in with larger items like bottles, nets, and packaging. The patch exists because of ocean currents, specifically the North Pacific Gyre. These rotating currents act like a giant whirlpool, pulling in and trapping debris from across the ocean, including waste from Asia and North America.

Estimates of how big this is vary, but it’s often said to be twice the size of Texas (or even larger). However, because the debris is spread out, parts of it can look like a normal ocean at first glance. There are efforts underway, like projects from The Ocean Cleanup, to remove plastic, but it’s extremely difficult due to the scale and the tiny size of much of the debris.