The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Worse Than You Think

On the Media | Mar 10, 2017

In 1997, captain Charles Moore wrote about sailing through a patch of garbage in the Pacific which went on for days. At first, media reports referred to the patch as the size of Texas, then twice the size of the Texas, then five times the size of Texas, and so on. The vision of the garbage patch was also transformed by misleading stock photos of polluted rivers. 

Dan Engber, a columnist for Slate, says this idea of the garbage patch is wrong—but it's also comforting, because it allows us to believe our plastic is accumulating in one confined place in the middle of the Ocean, far from us. He talks to Bob about how the truth is actually harder to envision, and also much more dangerous: the plastic garbage patch is more like a soup of contaminants that seep into the food chain. 

Song:

Let's Face the Music and Dance by Harry Roy & His Orchestra

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