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Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World's Deepest Ocean Trench (nationalgeographic.com)
The Mariana Trench -- the deepest point in the ocean -- extends nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong. From a report: A recent study revealed that a plastic bag, like the kind given away at grocery stores, is now the deepest known piece of plastic trash, found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the past 30 years that was recently made public.
Polyethelene is less dense than water so if it's clean and empty then it will float. However an item in the bag or even a bit of sand washed inside could easilly push it over the edge into sinking.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
This particular plastic bag is not a problem, because sitting on the bottom of the ocean means that it will eventually become petroleum once again.
What we need to find is a way of making the rest of the floating plastic sink to abyssal depths.
Submarines compact their trash (along with weights) and deliberately send it to the ocean depths.
That's why if we required that plastic be denser than seawater, that would get rid of most of the problem - not because it would sink in the ocean, but because it would sink at the first place where it was dumped into water, in telltale accumulations. Currently, no one knows where all this plastic is being dumped.
Hawaii is has a gift of sorts, an active volcano. Why are we not throwing are non-recyclables and e-waste into the volcano? Next eruption, the lava will consume and break it down to it's basic elements anyways. Since it's going to be throwing tons of pollution into the atmosphere anyways, might as well take advantage of natures incinerator.
And yes, I'm being very serious. Perhaps it's more of a safety issue even in periods of relative inactivity?
Life is not for the lazy.
I don't remember who thought it up but that is actually one of the safest possible ways to dispose of a lot of nuclear waste. The plan was to mix the waste in with glass, temper and mold it into a big torpedo looking thing and drop it from a surface ship into the ocean sediment at a subduction zone. Such an object would bury its self deep in the sediments which should prevent it from posing a radiation risk to anything alive in the vicinity. Over the eons it would end up encased in sedimentary rock, and then eventually melted into the mantle. By the time it might resurface it should be so diluted and decayed as to pose no discernible risk to any people that might be left around. We don't do it apparently because of international treaties which generally ban disposing of nuclear waste in the oceans.
An animal could have ingested it then died, sinking to the bottom and bringing the bag with it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil