Complex Numbers

Garbage Patch Kids

Final April entry for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]...

Storage Plastic and the Pacific Garbage Patch

Hopefully everyone has heard of the Pacific Garbage Patch   by now. Though technically it's not a patch but a gyre, and while the imagery makes you think there's just an unbroken layer of plastic soda bottles and whatnot in some sort of big island-looking thing, the reality is much worse: it's mostly microplastics, and you can't really see much of it.

Though there probably are a few floating islands. And sea monsters. There are always sea monsters.

The gyre is kind of like a black hole for floating plastics: they can get in, but being surrounded by currents, they can't get out, and so they just sit there and rotate like a galaxy (I might be mixing metaphors).

But it makes me wonder.

What if it was a bunch of macroscopic, non-degrading, floating plastics?

I mean, that would be bad too, sure, but if the patch were dense enough, maybe some enterprising person could... clean it up? Nah, we're talking evil genius here. Glue the pieces together (using epoxy or some other adhesive that could stand up to corrosive salt water) and build a raft on it. Glue the lids onto the storage boxes for extra flotation.

The plastic isn't going anywhere, so we might as well make it useful, right?

Someone could claim it. Build their own country. Get married. Have kids.

Garbage Patch Kids.

Come on, you know you want to.