The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a vast area of sea north-west of Hawaii, estimated at about seven times the size of Ireland, containing billions of pieces of plastic detritus.

The floating rubbish dump is the result of the winds and currents of the oceans carrying away the mess from our throwaway society – though most of the plastic packaging, bags, nappies, fishing nets, toys, bits of equipment and disposable trinkets of various kinds that we dump is left in landfills, some of it finds its way to the sea.