Giant mass of plastic waste taking over the Caribbean – “One of the most devastating and disgusting things that you could imagine to see in the water”

Desdemona Despair

6 November 2017 (BBC News) – A huge mass of plastic bottles, cutlery and polystyrene plates has been found floating in the Caribbean. The “sea of plastic” stretches for miles. Underwater photographer Caroline Power was there to witness it first-hand.

Photos don’t exactly do it justice. It was one of the most devastating and disgusting things that you could imagine to see in the water. We must have gone through an area about five miles wide that had just garbage strewn everywhere. You know on the surface you could see plastic floating and underneath the surface there were plastic bag after plastic bag. I mean it was just unbelievable. It was just everywhere.

And then we reached an area where we thought we’d seen the worst, and then after that it was just even … there was even more trash. An area about two miles wide had these trash lines that were maybe up to 30 meters wide that just stretched from horizon to horizon. It almost looked like a floating island.

Countries like the UK use somewhere around 13 billion plastic water bottles a year. Of those, only 3 billion are recycled. The rest of them end up in the landfill, and a lot of people believe “I put my trash in the trashcan, it goes in the bin, it goes away.” But that’s unfortunately not true,  a lot of that ends up washing out into the oceans. I mean the amount of trash in the ocean is just overwhelming, and ninety percent of that is made up of plastic.

The giant mass of plastic waste taking over the Caribbean