http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/04/140414-ocean-garbage-patch-plastic-pacific-debris/

The Best Way to Deal With Ocean Trash
Plastic debris doubles every decade. What ends up in the ocean is nearly
impossible to clean up.

By Laura Parker
National Geographic
PUBLISHED APRIL 14, 2014

Tony Haymet, former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
has heard hundreds of ocean cleanup plans. Late at night, over many
beers, he's come up with a few dozen of his own. None of them, he says,
has seemed likely to work.

That includes this spring's offerings. A Dutch engineering student,
Boyan Slat, envisions a contraption with massive booms that would sweep
debris into a huge funnel. Songwriter and music producer Pharrell
Williams wants to fund the monumental cost of any cleanup by turning
recycled ocean plastic into yarn and then clothes.

The challenge is huge. For one thing, the garbage is spread over
millions of square miles. For another, it's made up mostly of degraded
plastic, broken down by sunlight and waves into tiny bits the size of
grains of rice.