A teenager’s plan to trawl for plastic in the Pacific becomes reality

FEW things exercise green sensibilities more these days than marine plastic litter. The detritus looks unsightly when it washes up on beaches, and cruel when it chokes photogenic sea creatures. Scientists estimate that perhaps 8m tonnes of plastic waste enters the ocean each year, discharged by rivers or shed from ships. Plenty stays close to shore. Some, though, is carried by currents to mid-ocean gyres.The biggest of these is located halfway between California and Hawaii—and so littered with flotsam that it has been nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A study published last March in by Laurent LeBreton of the Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch charity, and colleagues, found that it contains between 45,000 and 129,000 tonnes of plastic debris spread over an area roughly the size of Alaska.