Pacific rubbish dump stretches from Hawaii to Japan

What a depressing, overwhelming tale. This story in the Independent (UK) describes the giant floating garbage dump in the Pacific -- an expanse of floating plastic bags, bottles, junk that's about the size of the continental United States. The flotsam lies just below the surface, so it doesn't appear in satellite photographs. You have to be aboard a ship looking down to actually see the vast translucent gob of petroleum products. Since it's in a seldom-sailed area, the dump went unnoticed for years. This trash vortex consists of about 100 million tons of garbage.

Ocean rubbish graphic by the Independent, using information from Greenpeace.