land it's in the middle of the ocean called the great pacific garbage patch the name refers to the warley in masses of floating garbage and debris in the middle of the pacific ocean that all together at least the wreaked times the size of texas and can clearly be seen from outer space about eighty percent of the trash in the patch comes from land the other twenty percent comes from cruise ships other types of ships and oil rigs and the most common piece of garbage you'll find in it are plastic bags now i'm not trying to say that the us is the only country contributing to the giant floating island of crap no this is very much an international problem it is important note however that americans throw away and estimated one hundred billion plastic bags every single year and we recycle less than one percent of them can't stress this enough plastic does not ever decompose plastic debris on the ocean surface is broken down by sunlight which thickens the water and creates a sort of soup made of suspended plastic particles which are inherently toxic plankton and organic material and that growing