This picture might just seem like a photo snapped at a local lake, but really it's a picture from the Northern Pacific Gyre, otherwise known as the Great Pacific Trashdump. Because of ocean currents, 1000 miles from any land, trash from around the world collects. Sometimes the trash is called a trash island, but the name trash continent would be more appropriate. The size of the Gyre's trashdump is over the size of Texas. However, since the trash is in international waters, no government will suport any clean up efforts.
In The Social Creation of Nature, Neil Everdeen makes an analogy between humans and a harmful bug that wipes clean a forest in order to renew it. With our trash, especially the plasitics, destroying ocean life far from where any of us live, I can't help thinking that maybe his analogy was correct. In the end, of course, the bug dies before the renewal of the forest.
For more information, read this article by a sailor about seeing the Gyre.
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