Welcome to Garbage Patch State, Where Plastic Rules

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Today in Paris, a new nation was born. In the modern way, the news reaches America via Facebook, with these historic words:

it is with great emotion that we announce

that today our Nation has been regognized (sic) at the UNESCO in Paris,

what since yesterday, was called a “territory” is now a Federal State

THE GARBAGE PATCH STATE.

The ocean-blue flag was flying in France for one nation, suspended in the seawater, made of tiny bits of plastic.

In an effort to raise awareness of the five big patches of plastic waste forming in the centers of the ocean’s gyres—to say nothing of the particulate plastic choking the Great Lakes—UNESCO is declaring them to be a new nation at the High Seas, Our Future! Conference, happening this week in the French capital.

Floating bits of discarded plastic—bottle caps, fishing nets, bags, and sundry tinier pieces—cluster together in the north and south Atlantic, the north and south Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The plastic “islands” form in the dead zones in the center of the major oceanic gyres, or surface currents, which circulate the ocean. The currents warm Europe and bring things like hurricanes and conquistadors to the Caribbean.

Read the rest over at the new Motherboard.VICE.com.