Thumbs down: The world’s fastest growing island

A new nation can be found off the West Coast of California - a nation of floating garbage. And it’s growing.

According to a study published Thursday, this island, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is now twice the size of Texas. That’s 16 times larger than previous estimates of its size. And, worse, no government is taking ownership or responsibility for it.

According to the research by the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to clean the world’s oceans of plastic, the massive collection of plastic and other floating debris is now about midway between the Sonoma County coast and the Hawaiian islands and has grown to more than 600,000 square miles in size. In all it contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic and other material. The trash comes from countries all around the Pacific Rim, including North and South America and Asia. But because it is in international waters, only nonprofit environmental groups seem to be interested in working to clean it up.

A team of international scientists connected with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation spent three years gathering data to map the situation. The data included European Space Agency photos. Unfortunately, they discovered that this is not the only such patch of plastic. There are at least five such islands in locations around the world where a combination of wind and prevailing currents bring such garbage together in a concentrated area.

Thumbs up for these researchers for not letting this problem stay out of mind, even if it is out of sight. And thumbs down on the rest of us for allowing this floating trash heap to get larger by the day.