“Plastic bags that float into storm drains in the west coast make their way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a heap of debris twice the size of Texas floating in a no-man’s land between San Francisco and Hawaii. This patch has been growing, along with other ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s.

At this point, cleaning it up isn’t an option. It’s just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues.