[ExI] plastic turkeys

[BillK]

On Thu, 19 Nov 2020 at 21:24, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> plastics - whoever invents biodegradable ones will be superrich - ditto the person who invents a spray we can use on the floating islands of plastic flotsam and jetsam in the Pacific for them to degrade harmlessly -ditto for degradable styrofoam.  bill w
> ______________________________________________


What you suggest is correct. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch does
exist. (Actually it is two patches, the East and West patches). But
they are not floating islands - you can't actually see them.  :)

<https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/>
Quote:
The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates
because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance,
do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.

For many people, the idea of a “garbage patch” conjures up images of
an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches
are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called
microplastics. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye.
Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The
microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the
water look like a cloudy soup.
-----------------

The horrifying piles of plastic garbage that are frequently
photographed come from harbours and beaches before they have had time
to disintegrate into tiny microplastic fragments.



BillK