Environment
Humanity's Garbage Keeps Piling Up in the Arctic Ocean
Less ice and more shipping traffic has left the seafloor looking like the side of a New Jersey highway.
This post is part of a CityLab series on wastelands, and what we squander, discard, and fritter away.
Humanity’s trash has near-universal dominion in the ocean. It swirls in the waves in immense “garbage patches,” drifts downward where it’s eaten by whales and turtles, and lands on the deepest sea floor to make it look like a landfill exploded on the moon.