I thought such a report would have the usual cries of 'ban the bag'. However as your report makes clear, disposable plastic bags don't seem to be the major items which comprise marine garbage. Are we going to ban all the items identified from the stomach contents of dead albatrosses? A sad state of affairs, but one with which we have to accept as the small price we pay for modern living.

The US is about 10 million squarte kilometres in size. Twice that is about 20 million square kilometres. 500 million tonnes of plastic waste - and I assume that is the usual Green hype rather than an actual figure - is 25 tonnes per square kilometre. A square kilometre is a million square metres. Or 0.025 grams oer square metre unless I have counted on my fingers incorrectly. By way of comparison a cubic metre is fresh distilled water weighs a tonne.

This is soup in the same sense homeopathic medicine is medicine.

I'm sorry to say this L Saunders, but I don't belive that dead albatrosses and other animals are the price we have to pay for modern living. Huge soups of plastics are the result of decades of ignorance and carelessness. I remember my mother clipping me round the ear for dropping litter in the street when I was a kid, now I see parents in the street in front of their kids doing the same, but we all know that.
In this modern age we talk about, surely we have the means to solve these problems, it just appears that the people that actually do have the power to really change things don't do so, why?...money, greed, profit today, the future somebody else can worry about.

So while I recycle my plastic or my glass, governments prefer not to solve the problems by banning plastic bags, or plastic wrappings on products. No alternatives? come on! While people talk and stall we continue to have our plastic soups.

Yes, we should be doing more to recycle plastics. Many local councils still have inadequate plastic collection or drop-off facilities. Supermarkets still use ridiculous quantities of plastic packaging - items that I avoid buying where I can. While bags, bottles and packaging are bad, disposal of plastic-encased electrical products must be mushrooming. For less than £40 you can buy an inkjet printer. If you are lucky, will last for two years. It will then be buried in the ground, where it will stay for potentially hundreds of years. With cheap Far Eastern manufacturing, the distinction between products and consumables is becoming blurred. Producers need to provide responsible options, consumers need to choose them, and everyone needs to clear up the mess we've made already.

This is the result of something like 7 decades of our failure to recycle so much of our plastic waste.
I suppose if we hadnt dumped it there we would either have incinerated it or buried it in landfill - rather than recycled it?
But - incineration would have produced even more CO2!
And if we had used it for landfill the land available for that would have been even scarcer than it is now!
But maybe then we would have started recycling our other rubbish a lot sooner?!!
Lets look on the bright side - at least the Carbon in it is all sequestered safely.
Except for the effect on sea creatures and birds, and higher up the food chain.............
The trouble will really start when someone suggests we clean it all up now and incinerate it - rather than recycle it, like we should have done in the first place!!

One further comment.
Quite clearly, all governments should pass legislation banning the use of any plastic material that cannot be recycled economically starting from, say, 1 years time.
We should all start recycling all the plastic waste that can be recycled by the same deadline.

An old story but an issue non the less, and plastic bags are without a doubt a sin of modern times. Its time for supermarkets to begin investing in alternatives and implementing them. Excess packaging (like bananas in what can only be described as plastic coffins) must be made illegal, supermarkets must understand their role in setting a greener trend. How far away are we from rocket blasting rubbish into space? At the current rate, not far at all.

I recall reading extensive internet articles about this around two years ago. Perhaps if less media time was squandered on global warming fear mongering there might be more space available to allocate to inconvenient disasters that have been and are occurring now and are impacting upon our environment. How easy it is to conjure what might be in the future while ignoring so many current and devastatingly gross acts of pollution that we can do something about.

With rising sea levels caused by climate change we will be literally drowning in plastic. Oil is causing both problems and until we get this, we are going to be suffering seriously obvious consequences.

Re prior comment by Benjamin Kirby above who calculated "0.025 grams per square metre unless I have counted on my fingers incorrectly...This is soup in the same sense homeopathic medicine is medicine".

Yes, you did count incorrectly Benjamin - correct result is 250 grams per square meter (not 0.025 as you stated) - your'e out by a factor of 1,000,000. If you're going to engage in "scientific" sounding debate please 1) Give your sources 2) Check your figures :-)

My figures and sources are below.

Continental US land area is about 1 million square kilometres in size (Source: Central Intelligence Agency World Fact Book - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#Geo). Twice that is about 2 million square kilometres. 500 million tonnes of plastic waste is 250 tonnes per square kilometre. Now, a tonne = 1 million grams & a square kilometre is 1 million square metres. Dividing 250,000,000 by 1,000,000, we get 250 grams per square metre.

I think there is a significant slice of the population now, who are more than willing to make the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra a part of their everyday life. However, when it comes down to practical application I feel there is a huge knowledge gap in relation to the symbols used on packaging to denote its recyclability. At the point of discarding the materials, it's difficult to know what can and can't put forward for recycling. At the point of purchase, similarly, the inscrutable symbols on packaging leave it difficult to make an ethical choice in what to buy. In this way, I think we all need to brush up on our symbols - even to the extent of including it in school lessons. It should become second nature to our children to make consumer choices based as much on recyclability, as on the colour-coded straps for sugar, fat and salt.

Actually, what would be great to see, is the option to drag your shopping to a corner of the store and meticulously unpack all your stuff, reload it all into a big cardboard box, and dump your packaging detritus in the store from which you've bought it. I think, after a week, a supermarket choking on its own packaging might rethink its approach to it. (Alternatively, if you are jaded by constant talk of academic consultations and have become stats-blind, take a leaf from my mother's book who, in protest, turns her carrier bags inside out as she packs her shopping and refuses to give the stores the free advertising)

So many have already said this - but - TAKE cloth bags to the greengrocer's/butcher's/baker's (if you have time - I know many haven't) and avoid the supermarkets, or use them less. BADGER your local council for more recycling (ours doesn't do plastic) and follow it up as far as you can to see where it goes. BADGER the government to stop kow-towing to business interests and make them responsible for their plastic pollution. ASK (politely, but insist) that shop assistants remove unwanted packaging at point of sale. I've had great success with this, especially as I play the apologetic/hesitant role. I know others who have the guts to hold up the queue at the supermarket as they do this. To those who think destruction of species/habitat is a small price to pay - get out more. Go and see some species in their natural habitat, or better still, volunteer to help out those who DO care about them. Take your kids with you - it might be their last chance to see these creatures.

The government needs to get a grip.. forcing supermarkets to make biodegradable products and ease off altogether on packaging..if we could leave our packaging in the supermarket after we done the shopping surely something will happen... its also in our hands .. not to buy from supermarkets and shop locally and farmers markets as much as possible...

Over the last year or so I've noticed the odd food package in various shops made from corn. The packaging which looks like clear plastic, is non-toxic and can be composted. I imagine it will cost the supermarkets more to buy this type of packaging but the vast profits they declare every year should not be that affected. Shouldn't all food packaging be made from this corn product - provided the supply of corn is monitored and regulated to avoid further environmental damage and exploitation? As long as the governments of western society continue to accept funding from corporate giants and is therefore obliged to go by their rules, then nothing will be solved. The buying public will have to pressure the corporations themselves to lead the way.

What are we waiting for? There is no room on the planet left for us to blithely dump on the proverbial neighbor's yard. It shouldn't take rocket science or new technology to solve the trash problem. We need to educate ourselves and shame governments into legislating decent human practices. It is our problem, collectively.

For those who want to do their bit towards reducing the amount of plastic waste, they can send stretchy plastic wrap such as that which covers magazines for recycling by sending it to

PolyPrint Mailing Films Ltd
Unit 21A Mackintosh Road
Rackheath Estate
Rackheath
Norwich NR13 6LJ

Is there a way to recycle household plastics? We collect everything but we have nothing to do with it! If people have no idea what to do with the plastic they have collected then there is a problem. Why should we feel guilty about not recycling our plastics if government and industries are not prepared to make a real difference to improve the enviroment?

The worlds rubbish dump

The Technology existsto treat it on site, companies think about working together, and those in charge talk about saveing the Planet, but the expence(in money)and the unwilling for working bigger(not just bigger thinking)mean that this mess will stay a mess instead of becomeing power heat and energy that would last for a 100 years or more! so so sad for the human race!!!!!!

looks like time is ripe to (re)read J.G. Ballard's Sci-Fi novel "The Drought"

Our local council (West Berks) has just done a 20+ year deal with a contractor to collect domestic waste and recycling. This will include plastic "bottles". Big deal. Plastic waste comprises a lot more than just bottles and the company concerned make it clear on their web site that they are unable to deal with mixed plastic waste - even if it has a recycling symbol on it. So most recyclable plastic waste ends up in landfill or the sea.

I am part of a campaign in a medium size town in Wiltshire to make Melksham plastic bag free. I have found talking to business independent as well as usual supermarkets that the general feeling is we all want the same result .Some want councils, governments ,businesses to be leading the way some like are self’s are leading from the bottom up linking with other motivated persons and groups. We all need to be part of the answer lets do the easy thing first get rid of plastic bags. Then we need to do the next easy step packaging month on month cutting back on plastic packaging through debate, dialogue and regulation this is already happening it may be small but there is a wave of change .Next lets break it up into individual item’s example drinks i.e. what’s best aluminium, glass, plastic recycled, disposable plastic and all the issues related to this. Lets remember, the environment has a monetary value to us all. One of British rails lessons has been not having a long term goal because of politics etc. well the environment is a long term goal lets not make the same mistake with the planet.

Today’s feature on the Pacific soup filled me with anger, fear, guilt and frustration. Like all of us, I am a passive aggressor, not ever mindful of my lifetime’s consumption and complicity in this wanton disrespect and destruction of our fabulous home.

I live by the sea, where many keen volunteers fight the plastic tide through regular beach cleaning. This is obviously the tip of an iceberg, about which there is nothing you or I or Christopher Robin can do to retrieve our contribution. Who can deal with such enormous quantities of plastic at sea? A nobler purpose perhaps, for whalers, trawlers, oil tankers and naval vessels in a concerted international salvage effort funded by a tax on all plastic goods and a substantial contribution from the oils and plastics industrial giants. But were it harvested, where would it go? And how could we all manage to break the plastic chains and prevent it recurring?

I recommend www.storyofstuff.com for guilty consumer enlightenment.

Of course we need to phase out the use of ALL plastic as a material immediately. We need to redesign any product that is made from plastic, to conform to the 'cradle to cradle' design concept - so everything we manufacture is in a closed loop system. As developed by McDonough & Braungart. Its all about rethinking product design and starting a clean up operation. The alternative materials will be equally acceptable and functional compared to what we have now, actually superior. For example, HEMP plastics are a viable, totally ecological alternative. The solution must be safely biodegradable. A clean-up operation of this plastic ocean must start - I know its only moving it from sea to landfill, but then we are entering an era when we must begin to phase harmful materials out anyway, and it must be more harmful to remain in the ocean ?

How did 4/5 of this plastic come from land and only 1/5 from boats. I thought waste was either buried or burned.
Is there a legal framework to help prevent the discarding of hazardous waste at sea?
These waste soups could be trawled,and people who run boats should be reminded of the responsibilities they have towards the oceans and the life therein.

I am an ecologist that works for a professional consultancy in the UK in which capacity I undertake work in freshwater environments such as streams and river corridors. Plastics and other materials such as rubber have been around for many decades, only in relatively recent times have they been produced to biodegrade. The treatment & disposal of this material has been mostly without consideration of the impact to the environment - nearly every field & garden in the UK will contain a certain amount of plastic - it is cheap to produce & can be used in many ways. From the many surveys of rivers I have undertaken (especially in urban areas) there is a large amount of disposed plastic (old and new)to find its way into the marine environment, especially as a result of more extreme and widespread flood events and erosion. Like any other object a piece of plastic is subject to physical forces within the environment it occurs in so in marine environments will reduce in size over time as it is pulverised by mechanical action of waves, other solid particles in suspension and rocks in coastal areas. Plastic particles exist that are now down to 10 microns in size - almost at the atomic scale - small enough that the plastic may become unstable and its molecules combine with other free molecules to form new compounds. Virtually every marine organism from whales to krill is or now has the potential to contain these minute particles with as yet unknown affects on the food chain. I understand that there is some research is ongoing on this issue based in the UK and other countries. Ban plastics? I think it a bit late in the day - we will have to watch what unfolds from our past foolhardiness.