What's Dumped on Your Beach?
By Marcus Eriksen on February 25, 2010
We’ve found a beach in the Azores that receives the southern swell and
wind from hurricanes that dominate the North Atlantic in winter, above
the Sargasso Sea. We caught the edge of one a couple of weeks ago,
with gusts up to 50 knots and waves three stories tall. But what else
do these waves carry? The Sargasso Sea is a sea without borders,
gently spun by the clockwise currents of the Gulf Stream, North
Atlantic Current, Canary Current and the Equatorial Current. These
currents brush by Europe and North America, and receive water from
We’ve seen so much of it in the North Atlantic Gyre, but there’s more ashore. After three thousand miles and three islands, we’ve seen that one place where plastic pollution goes is on the beaches of island in the gyre. This beach was littered with the usual suspects; light sticks, toothbrushes, buckets and crates, bottles, bottle caps, cigarette lighters, clothspins, and tattered fragments of plastic film. Once again I’m struck with the fascination that this beach was
What will they do with this plastic pollution? The community of Horta will bury it on the island. It’s a short term solution to a long term problem. But what if this stuff had value? What if individual products were worth something? What if all of it were worth something by it’s weight, like we do for all metals? Systems of recovery must be improved, and it can happen with legislation. Currently, some states are proposing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which creates a post-consumer economic incentive to bring back products for money. It works whenever the strategy is used. For great information about EPR visit http://cleanproduction.org/Producer.Introduction.php.
rivers that flow into them. They also carry plastic pollution.
We’ve seen so much of it in the North Atlantic Gyre, but there’s more ashore. After three thousand miles and three islands, we’ve seen that one place where plastic pollution goes is on the beaches of island in the gyre. This beach was littered with the usual suspects; light sticks, toothbrushes, buckets and crates, bottles, bottle caps, cigarette lighters, clothspins, and tattered fragments of plastic film. Once again I’m struck with the fascination that this beach was
cleaned recently before the storm.
What will they do with this plastic pollution? The community of Horta will bury it on the island. It’s a short term solution to a long term problem. But what if this stuff had value? What if individual products were worth something? What if all of it were worth something by it’s weight, like we do for all metals? Systems of recovery must be improved, and it can happen with legislation. Currently, some states are proposing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which creates a post-consumer economic incentive to bring back products for money. It works whenever the strategy is used. For great information about EPR visit http://cleanproduction.org/Producer.Introduction.php.
Tags
Plastic Anna Cummins Algalita Plastic Pollution Marcus Eriksen 5gyres 5 Gyres Plastiki Junk Junkraft
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2 Comments 
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John radford
Mar 17, 2010 11:26 AM
Fascinating info on your website. I retired 17 years ago to the East Suffolk coast, beautiful coast, but ruined by plastic on the tide line, beach and on to the foreshore and nearby countryside. I pick it up daily (put it in plastic bags of course!). I must have lifted tons over the years. Hopeless, never ending work. Measures you list to stop dumping, and recycling will help, I hope..
One of the most prevalent bits of waste are those throway plastic coffee cups. Could we not persuade the manufatureres to go out of business or at least put some comment on the cups like "Toxic if dumped, please bin me!"
John
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James Parker
Mar 11, 2010 6:39 PM
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James Parker
