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There's a lot of garbage in the news. No, really. Actual garbage. Within the past year or so, various sources have been reporting about what has been deemed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Located in a gyre (system of rotating ocean currents) in the Pacific Ocean, the Patch gets press. And rightly so. It is the world's largest landfill, unofficially.

Home to millions of pieces of garbage (overwhelmingly plastic), the Patch occupies an expanse of ocean about the twice size of Texas, though it's official "borders" are somewhat difficult to determine. Here are some other fun patchy facts:

• 90% of all garbage floating in the ocean is plastic
• This plastic will photodegrade (break down from sun exposure) into tiny pieces but need thousands of years to fully biodegrade
• Every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic
• 80% of ocean trash originates on land
• Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic produced annually, 10% ends up in the ocean
• More than a million birds and marine animals die each year from consuming or becoming caught in plastic and other debris

As these pieces of plastic break down smaller and smaller, they work their way into the food chain...and into our diets. As smaller fish consume the bits (often inadvertently), the larger fish consume the smaller fish. Which are, of course, eaten by humans in turn. Even worse, these small bits of plastic (called nurdles) often soak up other dangerous compounds and toxins in the ocean, those usually rendered harmless by dissipation in water. But when concentrated in the nurdles, they are once again a threat.

 Check out the video below: