【Sisters Slave】

At some 35,Sisters Slave700 feet beneath the ocean, there is a white plastic bag lying in the sand at the deepest ocean depths, in the Mariana Trench.

Scientists have known about the bag since May 1998, when a robotic deep-sea submersible spotted it while surveying the bottom of the trench. But a recent study on deep-sea plastic pollution gave this sad bag -- representative of the planet's amplifying plastic pollution problem -- new life.

It is still the deepest known piece of plastic debris on our planet, say the researchers. The trench's literal deepest depth isn't much further down, at approximately 36,200 feet.

SEE ALSO: Arctic sea ice is loaded with plastic litter from cigarettes and paint

In their endeavor to characterize today's deep sea pollution, the researchers relied on a Japanese library of deep-sea images called the Deep Sea Debris Database. As might be expected, this sort of pollution is no longer rare, as debris -- including visible pieces of metal, rubber, and plastic -- was found all over the Pacific Ocean and North Atlantic at depths greater than 13,000 feet.

And this, of course, is only documenting the plastic pollution that can be seen. Unsurprisingly, the Mariana Trench is also polluted in less visible ways, including chemicals used to make plastics found in tiny, shrimp-like creatures.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Plastics don't go away, they simply break down into smaller pieces, Jennifer Lavers, a research scientist at the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, previously told Mashable. The minuscule plastics, many one-sixth the width of a human hair, have been found embedded in remote Arctic ice. It is believed that pollution from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, in the Pacific Ocean, traveled into these remote polar regions.

Coastal plastic waste on the Indonesian island of Jakarta in March 2018. Credit: Aditya Irawan/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The patch, which is an area twice the size of Texas with high concentrations of floating plastic pollution, is growing. After 30 vessels spent three years dragging nets through the pollution gyre, researchers concluded it had at least four times more plastic than scientists previously thought.

Plastics aren't inherently bad, as they make technology cheaper and lighter. The problem is that plastic is typically only used once before being discarded -- similar to the white bag that lies at the bottom of the world.

Local governments are no longer banking on the greater public to voluntarily abandon their plastic consuming habits. The entire state of Hawaii has banned plastic bags in its grocery stores, and large markets in Los Angeles have done the same.

But the problem goes beyond these individual locations. New York City, for example, has a heavy amount of plastic bag pollution, with litter often getting caught in trees, to the chagrin of many New Yorkers. (There's one dangling in a tree outside this writer's window.)

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, recently announced a law banning single-use plastic bags, which would be an important step in the effort to limit plastic pollution in the oceans.

---

Featured Video For You

---

3 ways you can improve your recycling routine

---

• Tech
• Science
• Digital Culture
• Games
• Entertainment
• Social Good
• Deals
• Life

• Best Sonos deal: Save $50 on Sonos Era 100
• Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in Conversation
• Black Antipastoral and the End of the World
• Reading Roger Deakins’s Cinematography Blog
• MacBook Air reviews: 4 features critics loved, 4 they didn’t
• White Supremacy and the Dangerous Discourse of Liberal Tolerance
• Black Antipastoral and the End of the World
• Falling in Love with an Empty Man: The Work of José Leonilson
• How to Watch Netflix with Friends Anywhere (and No, It's Not Illegal to Share Your Password)
• The Epic, Neglected Vision of Joan Murray

• How do you draw an X? Twitter is divided over it.
• People have the weirdest nicknames for their pets and yep, it's a meme now
• Apple Watch Series 7 vs Series 8 and Ultra: How the prices compare
• Well, this wild Nextdoor post escalated quickly
• Brazil suspends iPhone sales until Apple includes a charger in the box
• Best iPad deal: Save $100 on the Apple iPad Mini in every configuration
• Fiona the Hippo turns 2, gets a birthday song from her hippo crush
• Painting restoration YouTube is the niche relaxation you need
• This massive fried rice prank turned into a great Photoshop battle
• Chadwick Boseman wins posthumous Emmy for Marvel animated series

• This new app is like Shazam for frogs
• “Even poverty is ancient history”: Resurrection City, 1968 by Jill Freedman
• The Poet Upstairs
• The Poet Upstairs
• Best headphones deal: Save $116 on Sennheiser Momentum 4
• When Jazz Was Dangerous by Nathaniel Rich
• Here for the Ride: Andre D. Wagner’s Subway Photographs
• How French Libertines Are Reckoning With #MeToo
• Best Sonos deal: Save $50 on Sonos Era 100
• Watching Screwball Comedies with Harry Mathews

• Earth sends Cassini a whole lot of love after the mission comes to a bittersweet end
• Two Thousand Pieces of Subway Ephemera
• A 1984 Film’s Bleak, Brutal Depiction of Nuclear Winter Still Haunts Today
• Two Thousand Pieces of Subway Ephemera
• The 5 most inappropriate things Donald Trump said at a Puerto Rico disaster briefing
• Don DeLillo’s Nuclear Football
• Dinner at the End of America by Laura Bannister
• Trump Disappears up Himself
• 2025 Oscar winners: See the full list
• The Baby, the Book, and the Bathwater