The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic and floating trash located halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles, about 80,000 tonnes, a study published Thursday finds. That's twice the size of Texas.



This figure is up to sixteen times higher than previously reported, say international reserchers. Winds and converging ocean currents funnel the garbage into a central location, said study lead author Laurent Lebreton of the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a non-profit organisation that led the research.


"Plastic concentration is increasing - I think the situation is getting worse. This really highlights the urgency to take action in stopping the in-flow of plastic into the ocean and also taking measures to clean up the existing mess," Lebreton said.


First discovered in the early 1990s, Lebreton said the trash in the patch comes form countries around the Pacific Rim, including nations in Asia as well as North and South America.

The patch is not a solid mass of plastic. It includes some 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic and weights 88,000 tons. The new figures are as much as 16 times higher than previous estimates.


The research - the most complete study ever undertaken of the garbage patch - was published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Scientific Reports.


Much of the garbage is rather large. "We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered, " said Julia Reisser, also of the foundation. "We used to think most of the debris consists of small fragments, but this new analysis shines a new light on the scope of the debris. "


The study was based on a three-year mapping effort carried out by an international team of scientists linked with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, six universities and an aerial sensor company.


Sadly, the Pacific patch isn't alone. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest of five known such trash collections in the ocean, Lebreton said.



What the study found:
1. Plastics made up 99.9% of all debris in this part of the ocean
2. At least 46% of plastic consisted of fishing nets, and over three quarters of the plastic was debris larger than 5cm, including hard plastics, plastic sheets and film
3. Although most large items had broken down into fragments, the researchers were able to identify a small number of objects, including containers, bottles, lids, packaging straps, ropes, and fishing nets
4. Fifty items in the sample had a readable production date: one from 1977, seven from the 1980s, 17 from the 1990s, 24 from the 2000s and one from 2010
5. Only certain types of debris that were thick enough to float stayed and accumulated in this zone, such as the common plastics polyethylene and polypropylene, which are used in packaging.