Recent studies show that the United States is the country that dumps the most water bottles into the ocean. In fact, studies show that the United States contributes no less than 242 million tons of trash into the ocean each year.
However, it is undeniable that ocean debris is a mix of trash from all over the world. The water bottle may be from Los Angeles, the food container from Manila, and the plastic bags from Shanghai. The amount of trash floating in the ocean is too much to bear.
The marine ecosystem is now severely polluted by plastic garbage, which comes from different countries, most of them from Asia.
While it is great that humans are trying to clean up the stain, most efforts should be directed at stopping the uncontrolled flow of plastic trash into the oceans.
Is New York City still dumping trash into the ocean?
Generating more than 14 million tons of trash a year, New York spends an estimated $2.3 billion to dispose of it, sometimes 7,000 miles away in China.
As the largest city in the world’s most wasteful country, it’s no wonder that New York generates more garbage than any other city in the world.
As it is also the densest city in the United States, its narrow, traffic-clogged streets make collecting all that trash even more difficult. Its location doesn’t help much either, being a gigantic urban sprawl where spaces are limited to contain its garbage.
How does NYC manage its waste?
New York City has a complex waste management ecosystem that encompasses two city agencies and three modes of transportation (trucks, trains, and barges). With 1,668 city collection trucks, another 248 private waste hauling companies, and a diverse network of temporary and permanent facilities spanning halfway around the world, they try to make it all work.
There are some 87,000 tons of garbage in the Pacific Ocean, And counting.
The contents of a sea turtle’s stomach, according to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, an organization that funds research into plastic debris found in the PacificCredit, Ocean Cleanup Foundation
In the Pacific Ocean, between California and Hawaii, hundreds of miles from any major city, floating in the water are an array of objects such as plastic bottles, children’s toys, broken electronics, abandoned fishing nets, and millions of fragments of debris at least 87,000 tons of trash, a group of researchers reported.
In recent years, this infamous area has become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a marine swirl of debris where everyday objects are deposited by currents. At a certain point, the plastic disintegrates into tiny particles that are often eaten by fish and may eventually find their way into our food chain.
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The researchers said that fishing nets make up a staggering amount of the trash they identified. Credit… Ocean Cleanup Foundation
A study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports quantified the extent of the garbage patch: it is between four and sixteen times larger than previously thought, occupies an area roughly four times the size of California, and is estimated to contain 1.8 trillion pieces of trash. Although it was once thought to look more like a soup of almost minuscule particles of plastic, scientists now think most of the trash is made up of larger pieces. What’s more, they say, it is growing “exponentially.”