Plastic bottles, toothbrushes, chip bags make up huge floating garbage site in Caribbean



Just off the Caribbean island of Roatan lies a massive pile of floating garbage.
It spans kilometres of ocean and consists of everyday plastic items like chip packets, cutlery and ziplock bags and even thongs.
The emergence of this rubbish patch is likely due to recent hurricanes that struck the region, one of Australia's top scientists has said.

"It is shocking and it's very confronting", said Dr Britta Denise Hardesty, the principal research scientist for oceans and atmosphere at the CSIRO.

"I wish I could say that I'd never seen anything like that before."


A remote and uninhabited island wilderness in the South Pacific is literally a garbage dump and these photos prove it.

Dr Hardesty has worked in the Caribbean, which was "scoured" by wild weather during Hurricanes Irma and Maria last month.
She said the floating rubbish would contain everything from building waste and household waste to "all sorts of things" coming off the land.

Balance of the Story