Rotterdam, Netherlands-based nonprofit group Ocean Cleanup has brought ashore its first haul, 60 tote bags of plastic it scooped from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. "We actually have the first ...

What Californian hasn’t walked along one of our superb beaches only to stumble upon water bottles, cigarette butts, clamshell burger boxes and all manner of nasty plastic trash? We sigh, and plod on.

As the policy director of the ocean conservation nonprofit 5Gyres.org, I can tell you that the problem of ocean plastic pollution is massive. In case you didn’t know, an ocean gyre is a rotating ...