Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — An expert says there is pushback from environmental groups when it comes to cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Bradley Nolan, waste management adviser at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), spoke at the 32nd Pacific Islands Environmental Training Symposium at the Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan.

He was asked from the floor about efforts to address the massive plastic accumulation zone in the North Pacific — a swirling gyre of marine debris between California and Hawai'i, commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

[An ocean gyre is a large, circular system of surface currents in the ocean, driven by global wind patterns, Earth's rotation, and the presence of landmasses. These currents create massive whirlpools that circulate water in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction depending on the hemisphere.]

Nolan, who presented on regional waste management resources, acknowledged the urgency and complexity of the issue, tying it to global negotiations under way for a plastics treaty.

"Article nine of the plastics treaty currently under negotiation talks about legacy plastics and cleaning up the marine environment," he said.

"There are a number of technologies trying to scrape up and clean the patch, and it makes sense to do that — but now we're seeing pushback from some environmental groups."

According to Nolan, a growing number of scientists and green groups have raised concerns that clean-up efforts could destroy an unintended but now-established ocean ecosystem.

"Because that garbage patch has existed so long, it's created a new marine habitat — a floating ecosystem that didn't exist before," Nolan said.

"Efforts to clean it up could cause massive bycatch and harm species that have come to depend on it."

While the "patch" isn't a solid island of trash, it is a dense concentration of microplastics and floating debris, which accumulate due to oceanic gyres. Roughly 80 per cent of that material comes from land-based sources, not ships, he said.

Calling the garbage patch "a significant problem with no simple solution", Nolan said the issue touches on marine biodiversity, waste transboundary movement, and the production of harmful micro- and nano-plastics.

"This is a complex issue — and complex issues rarely come with easy fixes," he said.

In 2023, the Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental engineering organization, removed about 25,000 pounds of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch remains a symbol of the global plastics crisis. While innovation in clean-up continues, experts like Nolan stress that prevention — especially at the land-source level — must be prioritized across the Pacific.

The four-day symposium features workshops on hazardous waste, climate adaptation, and the PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) contamination crisis facing islands such as Saipan and Guam. It concluded on Friday [Saipan time].