Who is responsible for cleanup?

                     If only it were that simple.......


I think that after looking at all the information that has been discussed so far, the one that interests me the most is that no country takes responsibility for contributing to the Pacific Trash Vortex and therefor no one has made efforts to change their waste disposal practices OR begin cleaning the area. As you can see by the location, any number of countries can be contributing to the huge mass of plastic that is floating around in the waters. The United States, Canada, Russia, China, and Japan are the closest but that is just land mass. What about the ships that sail in those waters and probably use them as their own personal garbage pit? Couldn't they be just as likely of a culprit? It seems amazing to me that not one has stepped up to try to pick up their mess. The amount of time it takes some of this plastic to break down is long, not all of it has been recently disposed. Some of this trash is from the non-environmentally friendly disposal practices countries had before we began realizing that eventually we will bury ourself in trash. Don't you think they should be held responsible even if this is their "trash from the past"?