The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that stew of broken down plastic trash that lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is getting bigger.

An article in Tuesday’s Telegraph cites various estimates of the Patch’s size, which may have doubled over the past 10 years:

Dr Simon Boxall, a physical oceanographer at the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, goes even further: “It’s the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it’s only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem.”

Plastic waste spells death for a million birds and 100,000 mammals per year, according to UN figures. And as industrialization and consumerism show no signs of slowing down, expect more trash, death and growing garbage patches full of tiny plastic particles marinated in toxins. They get in the food chain and eventually end up in human stomachs and even in cosmetics that use marine extracts.

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