Meet The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

It is twice the size of Texas, weighs 3.5 million tons and floats in an otherwise empty stretch of ocean between northern California and Hawaii.

It is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it's where coastal litter -- particularly plastic -- ends up, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

According to one estimate, it's been growing tenfold every decade since the 1950s, and it poses a perpetual hazard to ocean life, like seabirds and turtles, which mistake the plastic for the likes of jellyfish.

The solution is as simple as it is elusive: Don't use so much plastic, and don't litter.

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