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What is Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

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A. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is a vast collection of marine debris found in the central North Pacific Ocean, between California and Hawaii, USA.

It spans an area of approximately 1.6 million square kilometers and weighs around 80,000 tons. Shockingly, it contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic trash — equivalent to the weight of 500 large airliners. That's an area roughly 16 times the size of South Korea — except instead of soil, it's made of plastic.

And the patch keeps growing. If it continues at the current rate, experts predict that there will be more trash in the ocean than fish by 2050. Cast a fishing line out there, and you might be more likely to reel in a plastic bottle than an actual fish.

▲ A mass of floating debris in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.Source: The Ocean Cleanup

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GPGP Becomes the Nation of Trash Isles

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▲ Charles Moore first came across the patch in 1997, while sailing back from a trans-Pacific race.Source: The Ocean Cleanup

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was first discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, a racing boat captain, on his way back from a trans-Pacific race between Los Angeles and Hawaii. This discovery of a giant patch of plastic junk floating in the ocean helped alert the world to just how serious ocean pollution had become.

▲ Logo of the media group behind the Trash Isles campaign.Source: LAD Bible

In celebration of World Oceans Day 2017, the Plastic Oceans Foundation and the LADbible Group teamed up to turn the trash patch into a nation. The idea: if the United Nations recognized it as a country, neighboring nations would be legally obliged to clean it up.

It was officially named the Trash Isles. A government was formed, borders were drawn, and citizens were recruited. Al Gore, former US Vice President and well-known environmentalist, became the island's first citizen, and Judi Dench, who played M in the James Bond films, was named Queen of Trash Isle.

Today, the "nation" has its own flag, passport, and currency, and more than 200,000 people have joined as "citizens" online. The currency is called "debris," and its notes feature sea lions and seagulls tangled in plastic netting, and whales swimming through a sea of plastic.

Trash Isles Currency

Trash Isles Passport

▲ A short film introducing the founding of the Trash Isles.Source: The Trash Isles, by Dalatando Almeida

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Q. How Was the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Formed?

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A. Wind patterns and ocean currents have gradually pulled marine debris together into one area.

The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch non-profit research organization, spent three years tracking the patch alongside scientists from around the world, and published its findings in 2018.

The research revealed why the patch suddenly grew so much larger: debris from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake was carried by the Kuroshio Current, which flows from Asia toward the North Pacific. When researchers examined labels on debris collected from the patch, 30% were in Japanese and 29.8% were in Chinese.

For closer analysis, the Ocean Cleanup team sorted the collected plastic into four size categories:

▲ Microplastics: 0.05–0.5cm

▲ Mesoplastics: 0.5–5cm

▲ Macroplastics: 5–50cm

▲ Megaplastics: over 50cm

Megaplastics accounted for 42,000 tons — the largest share by weight — with 46% of that being fishing nets or aquaculture gear. Microplastics made up 5–10% of the total. Because plastic stays in place until it breaks down into smaller fragments, the concentration of microplastics in the patch is expected to keep rising.

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GPGP Is a Result of Human Activity

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, in the end, something humanity made. According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), approximately 9.2 billion tonnes of plastic were produced worldwide between 1950 and 2017 — equivalent to the weight of roughly 1.1 billion elephants.

Plastic production keeps climbing. In 2024 alone, 430.9 million tonnes of plastic were produced, and output is projected to reach roughly 590 million tonnes by 2050. Divide that by the world's 8 billion people, and each of us is, on average, responsible for producing about 54kg of plastic a year — close to the weight of an adult.

▲ Global plastic production grew from 322 million tonnes in 2015 to 430.9 million tonnes in 2024, and is projected to reach 590 million tonnes by 2050.Source: PlasticsEurope/Statista

More than 80% of the plastic produced is discarded, and an estimated 19–23 million tonnes find their way into the ocean every year. UNEP puts it this way: it's the equivalent of 2,000 garbage trucks of plastic being dumped into the world's oceans, rivers, and lakes — every single day. Without meaningful action, this volume could nearly triple by 2040.

▲ Annual ocean plastic leakage rose from 9–14 million tonnes in 2016 to 19–23 million tonnes in 2024, and could reach up to 37 million tonnes by 2040 without action.Source: UNEP

So how much of all this plastic actually gets recycled? According to the OECD's Global Plastics Outlook, the global recycling rate is just 9% — fewer than 1 in 10 plastic items ever get a second life. The rest is landfilled, incinerated, or leaked straight into nature. At this pace, plastic waste is set to nearly triple by 2060.

So what does all this plastic actually do to marine life — and to us?

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Dangers of GPGP

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▲ How plastic makes its way from land into the ocean.Source: The Ocean Cleanup

Leaving marine plastic to drift is a threat to both marine ecosystems and human health. Marine animals often mistake shiny microplastics for food, such as fish eggs, and ingesting them can lead to stunted growth, reproductive problems, and disease.

Scientists recently sampled fish in the Mediterranean Sea and found microplastics in more than 18% of samples — including popular species like swordfish and bluefin tuna, as well as mussels farmed in the North Sea, oysters raised in the Atlantic, and even salt. In the end, the plastic we casually throw away comes back to us, laced with toxins, through the fish we eat.

A widely cited 2019 WWF and University of Newcastle study estimated that people consume around 5 grams of microplastics a week — about the weight of a credit card. Since then, however, several peer-reviewed follow-up studies have pointed to serious errors in that calculation; one 2021 alternative estimate put the figure at just 4.1 micrograms a week, roughly a millionth of the original claim. There is currently no scientific consensus on the exact amount. What is consistently confirmed across studies, though, is that microplastics are detected throughout the human body.

And recent research makes that even more striking. A 2025 study published in Nature Medicine found that the amount of micro- and nanoplastics detected in human brain tissue was about 50% higher in 2024 than in 2016. Researchers described the accumulated amount as roughly "a spoon's worth." Brains from people who had died with dementia showed markedly higher concentrations still. It's not yet clear exactly what this means for human health — but it's now clear that plastic has reached the deepest parts of our bodies.

▲ UN plastics treaty talks that began in 2022 failed to reach agreement in Busan (INC-5.1, 2024) and Geneva (INC-5.2, 2025); a new chair was elected in February 2026 to restart the process. Negotiations remain ongoing.Source: UNEP, INC-Plastic Pollution

It's time for humanity to seriously reckon with nature's revenge. Cleaning up the plastic that already exists won't be enough to eliminate the GPGP — we also need to reduce, at the source, how much plastic ends up in the ocean in the first place. The straw or bottle we toss without thinking today eventually finds its way back to the next generation's dinner table and health.

Written by Sharon Choi
Director of Planning