Currently, the GPGP covers 1.6 million square kilometers. Who decided that dumping garbage into the ocean was a viable solution?
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Because its unfathomably big, unfathomably deep, mostly not in our backyards and a whole lot more economical than trucking things out into the desert.
> Currently, the GPGP covers 1.6 million square kilometers
Which in the context of the Pacific Ocean is tiny (1%), especially when you consider the patch is not a contiguous floating trash island, but a region with just a particularly high density of rubbish. High in the context of the rest of the ocean, were still talking at its densest being ~100kg of rubbish per square kilometre of ocean. The patch is estimated at around ~100,000 tons of waste, which is small beans compared to land based waste dumps which can hold in the millions of tons. And we haven’t even talked about how deep the Pacific is or how its just one of several oceans.
Its kind of the perfect place to get rid of stuff if we just ignore the turtles and it stopped washing back ashore.
In all seriousness though I don’t think there is any systemic policy anywhere of just dumping rubbish in the ocean, no countries municipal trash service is loading shipping vessels with general rubbish to sail out and tip over the side.
Most of it ends up in the ocean thanks to falling into rivers, storm water drains or just generally lost during other ocean bound activity (ie fishing, cruise lines, shipping). No one has decided its viable to make the ocean a waste dump, its just where a lot of it ends up.
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