Here's a bit of firsthand info on the floating Pacific garbage dump
I read with interest your May Loose Lips item about Nike shoes washing ashore along the west coast. I've been backpacking the central Oregon coast for 20 years, and have found some interesting flotsam and jetsam. For example, about 10 years ago, we came across some of the Nike shoes you wrote about in the article. The local beachcombers cashed in on this true example of trickle down economics, for all up and down Highway 101, just about every house had a Nike yard sale going on. Over the years, we've also found large quantities of new paint brushes, plastic hard hats, and hockey equipment. Three weeks ago we began to find the Nike cross trainers shoes that you mentioned. The North Pacific is a nasty place to be most of the year, and even more so with all of those loose containers bobbing around out there.
Incidently, you would never know it was illegal to dump plastic into our oceans, for the amount of trash at the high tide line is sometimes staggering. I know that some of this can be attributed to the currents that concentrate everything in the North Pacific and then sweep it down the Oregon, Washington and California coasts, but one walk along this stretch of wilderness coastline would make most people think twice about tossing even the least little thing over the side. Plastic food packaging of all kinds, liquor bottles from all around the Pacific rim, and flipflops of every size and color make quite a disgusting mess.
http://www.latitude38.com/letters/200107.htm "Trickle Down Economics"