I have been working in Nashville the last week, on the flight home I came across this in a magazine:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 2 times the size of Texas.

Most people will never see the floating mammoth wasteland between San Francisco and Hawaii—and we can’t blame them. Since the ’50s, ocean currents have deposited all manner of plastic debris into the region, including lighters, toothbrushes, and shopping bags, causing the patch to swell by about 10 percent every year. And don’t blame ships for the mess: About 80 percent of the trash comes from landlubbers. What can you do about it? For starters, use recyclable plastics. More than 4.2 million tons of plastics were either landfilled or incinerated in 2005, and only 230,000 tons were recycled. That’s worth remembering the next time a cashier wants to give your new toothbrush its own tote.

—–
Read more about the garbage patch here and here.