Magazine

In 1997, Charles Moore, a former furniture restorer and retired sea captain, was sailing from Hawaii back to Long Beach, Calif. after a yacht race. Taking a shortcut home, he came across a terrifying sight: a cemetery for every plastic thing imaginable; baby toys, bottles, motor oil containers and giant entanglements of netting; an endless vista of plastic particles. The debris covered an area so large it took him an entire week to sail through it.

More than a decade after Moore discovered it, this vortex of synthetic waste swirls tirelessly, but now has an official name: the Eastern Garbage Patch. Estimates of its size range between 435,000 and 932,000 square miles, but most scientists refer to it as twice the size of Texas. Though it is largely a byproduct of urban centers and a potential threat to the health of humans and marine life, average citizens don’t know it exists. But if the current attention Moore is getting is any indication, consumers will soon think twice when they buy bottled water from a deli or bite into a piece of mahi-mahi.