UNESCO to Designate Ocean Debris as New State Julie Farrar - La Stampa/Worldcrunch
go to original April 4, 2013

Inside the Plastic Vortex (scrippsoceanography)

These are not the sorts of "islands" where you'd plan your next tropical vacation. Located in vast areas of the world's Oceans, by some accounts comprising an area twice as big as Texas, they are home to neither human nor animal life.

Instead these islands are instead simply monstrous spirals of trash.

And now, reports La Stampa, to bring attention to this epic example of man-made pollution, the United Nations' cultural and science agency UNESCO will designate the conglomerations of rubbish a veritable territory of its own. On April 11, the world will welcome a new "State" to be named Garbage Patch.

Garbage Patch comprises of five areas of man-made rubbish in the seas: North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. The largest, discovered in 2009, is called the Great Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex. Marine currents brings the rubbish together, swirling to the surface. The garbage gets broken down, thanks to photodegradation, into smaller and smaller pieces that are consumed by marine life, reentering the food chain.

Spain-based Italian architect Maria Cristina Finucci, has led the effort to get the UNESCO, state designation. The official Facebook page declares that Garbage Patch will be a federal state with a population of 36,939 - tons of garbage. The nation’s flag will be blue, like the oceans it pollutes.

Read the rest at Worldcrunch

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