What’s Your Idea To Clean Up The Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public Radio. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we follow your questions and curiosity wherever that may take us. We're always inspired by the variety of things you want to know more about. And every now and then, one of you lets us know about the way our program has inspired you. I don't like to sit still when I know huge problems are going on. I want to do something.

My name is Mary Elizabeth James, and I am eight, and I live in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada. What grade are you in in school? I'm in grade three. Tell me a little bit about how you learned about the problems with all of the plastics, big plastics and really, really little plastics in the Great Ocean Garbage Patch. Well, I listened to your podcast, and that got me thinking because...

It's not very good. When you heard about all of these plastics, how did it make you feel? Well, I felt like I should do something because, as I said, I'm not someone who sits still and watch something happen, which I don't find the best. How did you become that kind of person at seven and eight years old who says, this is a problem, but I'm not going to sit still. I can help to fix this.

Well, I love Harry Potter and Harry Potter's like that. So I'm kind of inspired by him, Warren Hermione, and all the other characters trying to do something about Umbridge, Voldemort, and all the other problems they are facing. The problem that Mary wants to solve is the pollution in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. She learned about it in an episode of But Why.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is kind of what its name suggests: a huge floating mass of plastic and trash of all kinds swirling around in the Pacific Ocean. It's between the Californian and Mexican coastline and the islands of Hawaii. And it's an area of the ocean that's really big: 1.6 million square kilometers, or 618,000 square miles.

That's more than three times the size of Spain, more than six times the size of the UK. This part of the Pacific Ocean is known as the North Pacific Gyre. A gyre is like a very slow-moving whirlpool. It's where ocean currents circulate. There are five gyres in the world, and they all collect rubbish that has gotten into the ocean after being thrown away by people. The most famous of these trash accumulation zones is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Let's listen to a little bit of the episode we made about this pollution problem that so inspired Mary. The guest we invited to tell us about it was someone who had actually been there. My name is Allie Maloney. I am the news and politics features editor at Teen Vogue, and my pronouns are she and her. I was lucky enough to travel on a ship to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

I was invited by an organization called Greenpeace, who does environmental work all over the world. And they're kind of known for their actions in defense of the environment. So they have these ships. They invited me to go with them. And it's over 1,000 miles from the shore. So we took off from Mexico. And then days and days and days later, we ended up at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch right in the middle of the ocean. It was wild to be there.

Allie wrote about her trip to the garbage patch in a feature she did for Teen Vogue as part of a series called Plastic Planet. Allie says a lot of people think the garbage patch is going to look like a big island of trash just floating on the surface of the water, but that's not really what it is.

When you get to the part of the ocean where it is, you can tell that something is different based on the degree of plastic in the water. But it's not just a flat surface. It's not an island like you would think of. So you're not having to break through the plastic with the ship. You're just looking down and you're noticing that, yeah, it is different here. There is more plastic here.

So describe what it actually looks like once you get there. You're on this boat for days and days, and then you said you noticed that something is actually different when you're in this gyre, when you're in this place where all of this garbage is. So you look out from the ship and you're standing on the deck.

And you can see in the water a lot of ghost nets. And those are where nets from the fishing industry and ships will kind of all come together into huge masses. So you've got...

Tons of different colors of net, and you can see that some are kind of rope and some are just clearly, you know, cut from plastic. But there's buoys of all different shapes and sizes. And then we would actually use a crane, a mechanical crane that would –

pull up from the side of the ship, down into the water, and pull out those ghost nets. So we started doing that when we got to the patch because we noticed them first. They're the biggest thing because the fishing and seafood industry actually is responsible for a lot of the trash, a lot of the plastic specifically in the ocean, and a lot of the plastic in the patch.

So we could notice these big masses that were clearly all net. And when we pulled them up on the back of the ship using this crane, we had to pull fish out. So we're pulling fish out and throwing them back in the water, just trying to save what we can see. And all the while, little crabs are running out from these big masses. But also in the water itself, you can see, you know, broken pieces of plastic. And we were tasked with keeping count because that was important for Greenpeace's research.

So we could see everything from buckets to traffic cones to just odd shapes and sizes to kind of recognizable shapes and sizes. I remember seeing what looked like the front of an air conditioning unit just kind of floating by in the water. But it's more concentrated there, so you can see a lot more. And then when you're closer to the water, they would put us in smaller boats off the ship.

And when you're actually out in the water itself, you notice that it's not just big floating pieces of plastic. We would send down divers. And what they said was underneath the water's surface, there's all of these teeny tiny pieces, these fragments of plastic. So those bigger pieces I saw floating, they break down farther and farther and farther, but they never fully go away. And the bottom of the ocean, especially in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is full.

full of it. They could move their hands through the water and they'd be moving their hands through very small pieces of plastic. And in some cases, sometimes people talk about things called microplastics and they can be even smaller than what you can see with your eye, right? So there's plastic all through the water in various sizes. Exactly. And that was what I was just describing that the divers could see. So all of the plastics that we know and we touch in our day-to-day lives are

if those aren't recycled properly and fully, that means that they're either going to go into a landfill where they seep into the ground and they ruin the soil, or they're going to go into the ocean. And the water will break it down over time if it doesn't end up on the shore. But if not, it's just slowly chipping away. And those little microplastics, they're going to go into the ocean.

That's what animals are, you know, when they are going for their actual prey, these sea creatures that we know and love, when they're going to take a big gulp of, say, a fish, in that big gulp they're getting tons of microplastics. So it's not just the big pieces that they're eating or that we see on the shores. It's these teeny, tiny little specks. But that was what Greenpeace was out there doing.

lowering something into the water called a trawl, which we would run alongside the ship, we would pull it out, and then we would sort through all of the microplastics. So we're seeing all of these different colors. There's blue, there's white, there's bright pink like a Barbie car. And it really starts to mess with you after a while because that's thousands of little pieces and those aren't even the big ones that catch your eye. Where does all this plastic come from?

Well, around the world, more than 380 million tons of plastic is produced each year. Half of all the plastic waste in the world comes from single-use plastics—stuff that's just used for moments and then thrown away, like a plastic grocery bag, a water or juice bottle, or a straw. And if you think about it, most of the plastic stuff we use just gets tossed in the trash.

Some of it ends up in our landfills. About 9% of all the plastic that's ever been made in the world has been recycled. And some of it ends up in the ocean. And that's bad. It's nearly impossible to get all those tiny little pieces of plastic out of the ocean.

Big and large plastic can cause lots of different problems. The problem with plastics is virtually that there's just too much. It ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, in the ocean, in our streams, and on our shores. Because we've created so much over the last, you know, between 50 to 70 years that...

The earth can't take it anymore, and more is being produced every day. Okay, so now you know a little bit about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Thanks to Allie Maloney of Teen Vogue for sharing her experiences with us in that episode from 2019. In just a moment, we'll get back to Mary and learn more about the invention she has dreamed up that she thinks might be able to help clean up all that plastic. Her invention has caught the eye of some engineers.

This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. Today we're following up on an episode we made about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that inspired eight-year-old Mary James. Mary heard our episode about this and wanted to do something. And then she discovered a competition for Canadian children to help create solutions to big challenges. It's called the Little Inventors Competition, and it's sponsored by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The current challenge is all about how to address pollution in the world's oceans. Mary drew a picture of an invention she thinks might help, and they liked her invention so much they're going to develop it further. Mary's idea is called a mermicorn, and I'll let her tell you how she came up with it. I was really interested in unicorns.

and also mermaids. And so I thought maybe I could combine it to make it into something. And the most successful one would be a unicorn with a tail. That's how I was inspired to make the mermicorn. What's special about the tail and the horn of the mermicorn, or is it just that you like unicorns? Well, the tail is so it can swim because it's in water.

And the horn is a decoration or something. Yeah, it looks cool. The horn doesn't do anything too much.

So you had this idea about a mermacorn, and I'm actually looking at your picture of it right now. You are? Yeah, your mom sent it to me. But all of the people listening won't be able to see it. They won't know what it looks like. So could you describe the mermacorn to us? So it's a tail. I think it's red. It has a green purse horn. It's white, and it's attached to a boat. There's a rope.

And then you mentioned it has this green purse. What does the purse do? Well...

Not only there's microplastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Batch, but there's also, there is chunkier ones. So it puts the chunkier ones in its purse.

So when it goes up out of the water, they can, like, empty the purse onto the deck of the ship. And those are the bigger plastics. And the smaller plastics go in its mouth? Yeah, like it digestes the smaller ones because anyone could digest them. That's how small they are.

So the myrmecorn you mentioned, it's connected by a rope to a boat. So is that how it gets out there and then they drop the myrmecorn in from the boat and it swims around eating and collecting these plastics? Well, sort of. Like it would be moved by the wind and stuff. But yeah, there probably should be someone on the boat to pull it up like once a day.

And the boat would probably go back and forth with land to collect food because people could not survive without food and water. That makes sense. So it would be connected by a boat and it would be pulled up every so often. So you had this idea, you drew this picture, and you submitted it to a competition. Do you know what the competition is called? Can you tell me that?

Little Ventures, I think. And it's this competition from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada with the idea that young people in Canada can submit their ideas for ways to clean up the ocean. Did you...

think that your Mermacorn was going to get to be named one of the ideas that they're actually going to make a model of? No, because I was like 12, the oldest was 12. So my mom told me that it's probably like, I'm probably not likely out of 500, about 10 I picked. So it's not good chances that yours would be picked.

Like two at a hundred. Whoa! How cool it must feel to have your invention picked up by the competition. So what's going to happen is that some of the engineers and researchers and designers who've been looking over all these invention ideas are going to turn a few of them into prototypes. A prototype is when someone makes a model or a sample of what a design looks like to test if it might work.

In this case, Mary's dad told me a student from the Ontario College of Art and Design will be making an animation of the Mermicorn. As Mary told us, the Mermicorn looks like a cross between a unicorn and a mermaid, and it swallows microplastics as it swims around, and then collects bigger plastic garbage in a purse around its neck. Mary says she wants the design to look cool, but the most important thing would be how well it works.

I'd prefer it to move perfectly and look ugly than look perfect but not very, very good. So it's more the goodness of it than the painting. But kids would like it more and it would be admired more if it wasn't nice. So I would think it would be good for both, but I would prefer it to have more robotics than art. And what about...

Well...

I would know you would want your children and stuff to be happy. So how about you try to change your behavior so a little less plastic can lead to it. If you could give your child a plastic cup, like a reusable plastic cup, rather than those ones where you first time use, please try to do so. That is good advice. We should all think about the amount of plastic we use and how to use less of it.

especially the kinds of plastic that only get used one time and then thrown away. Thank you so much, Mary James, for telling us about your Mermicorn. We can't wait to see if it ever gets a chance to swim around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If you'd like to learn more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and how to reduce the amount of plastic you throw away, go back and listen to our full episode from February of 2019. We'll have a link in our show notes.

And what's your idea to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? You can download our learning guide on our website and draw or write about your own invention. That's it for this episode. If you have a question about anything, have an adult record it using a voice app

Then you can send the file to questions at butwhykids.org. We can't answer every question we get, but we love hearing what's on your mind. And if you've been inspired to do something by listening to one of our episodes, we really love hearing about it. So feel free to share with us how our episodes help you take action to make the world a better place.

But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont Public Radio. We are distributed by PRX. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious.