The North Pacific Gyre is the ocean cur­rent vor­tex respon­si­ble for trans­port­ing huge amounts of pol­lu­tion into the ocean from the land alond the Pacific coastline.

In this Green­peace ani­ma­tion, we can see how trash moves around the Pacific over a 6-year period, even­tu­ally accu­mu­lat­ing as the Pacific’s ‘trash car­pet’.

It’s also worth not­ing that this so-called ‘trash car­pet’ is esti­mated to now be the size of Texas, and in these areas the sur­face water con­tains six times more plas­tic that plank­ton biomass.