I can’t help but think if people saw where their trash went, more of them would recycle. Especially now that recycling is easier than ever.

Turns out, the biggest landfill in the world isn’t on land at all: it’s in the middle of the ocean. It swirls around in two large masses called the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches (because of currents called ‘gyres’). One expert compared the gyres to a toilet that never flushes. Nice image. The Eastern Garbage Patch, between Hawaii and California, is bigger than Texas and growing. That’s one huge toilet, if you ask me.

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of driving across Texas a few times at its widest point, which generally takes about 12-13 hours. From El Paso to Shreveport, just over the Louisiana border, it’s 822 miles.

Imagine driving all that way not only with trash covering the road under your tires, but covering the surrounding landscape with no end in sight. That’s a whole lot of trash.

HowStuffWorks has a good explanation of why the garbage patches exist:

In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It’s the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.

For you college football fans, did you know that the Los Angeles river carries enough garbage each year to fill the Rose Bowl two stories deep? The Christian Science Monitor reported last year that “Globally, millions of tons of trash enter the ocean each year. Between 60 and 80 percent of it is land-based, washing into streams and rivers and finally the ocean from landfills, storm water discharges, litter, and sewage overflows.”

Unfortunately, because of environmentalists’ over-emphasis on wildlife in talking about environmental issues, and not enough on implications for humans over the long haul, a lot of us don’t give a second thought as to where our trash goes or how much of it we produce.*

I don’t claim to be an expert or even learned in these matters. But it doesn’t take a genius to understand a pile of trash the size of Texas in the middle of the ocean. Which is to say nothing of the vast landfills, beaches, rivers and streams full of rubbish.

I realize that only a handful of people who know me read this site. And so I post this as one friend to another, only meaning to encourage us all to make small efforts on a regular basis. Recycling isn’t hard work, it only take a little sacrifice. Common sense says that our waste takes up finite space. So why not save a little of it (space, that is) and drop off your bottles in a recycling bin? If everyone does something small regularly over time, it adds up significantly. The but-I’m-only-one-person-so-what-can-I-do excuse doesn’t really hold up. This is and will always be a community project.

Take a look at this multi-media presentation by the Los Angeles times for more info on the garbage patches in the ocean. Part four deals specifically with trash.

Click image to view presentation.

*Note: Please don’t get me wrong here: I do believe that we should take care of animals, and work on their behalf as stewards of the earth. Ultimately, the well-being of one species is the well-being of another, and so it goes throughout this web of interconnectedness we call life on earth. But placing wildlife above human suffering, for instance, hasn’t helped win the hearts of skeptics.