Oprah Shines Light On Great Pacific Garbage Patch (VIDEO)

Oprah Shines Light On Great Pacific Garbage Patch (VIDEO)

Oprah's green episode for Earth Day started with chilling footage and description of a giant island of trash -- "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch".

Currently, scientists believe the world's largest garbage dump isn't on land...it's in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches from the coast of California to Japan, and it's estimated to be twice the size of Texas. "This is the most shocking thing I have seen," Oprah says.

Just a month ago, the Natural Resource Defense Council's Kate Slusark blogged here at HuffPost Green about the giant oceanic trash dump:

To give you a little background: Years of bottles, bags, toys, packaging and plastic trash from all corners of the Earth are swirling in a plastic whirlpool in the North Pacific. Discarded water bottles from Iowa, takeout containers from New York City, flip-flops from California and plastic debris from the world over make their way from land into storm drains, streams, rivers and other waterways. They are carried out sea, where they get trapped in swirling ocean currents - forming a giant, floating trash dump of an enormous proportion - no matter how you quantify it.

WATCH:

What can you do about it? Well, as Kate wrote, you can be sure to recycle your plastic! And you can use less plastic.

Oprah also gave green living tips with HuffPost Green contributor Simran Sethi, and talked to Michael Pollan (who also blogged for us about "a food revolution in the making" for us here at HuffPost Green yesterday).

VBS.tv produced a 12-part Web series on Garbage Island earlier this month. Here's part one:

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot