I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS PLASTIC STRAWS IN KANSAS: Much of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’s Plastic Comes From These 5 Countries. “When the authors used computer models to simulate how their samples ended up in the patch, they found that a plastic fragment was 10 times more likely to originate from fishing activities than land-based ones. . . . Less than 2 percent of simulated debris from rivers ended up offshore, carried by ocean currents. In comparison, 21 percent of trawling gear waste and 15 percent of fixed fishing gear waste drifted into the deep, and more than 85 percent of those particles never encountered land in simulations. Of all 232 plastic objects analyzed by researchers clues about their origins, roughly two-thirds were made in either Japan or China.”