Pumice stones. Shape pumice into random ovular pieces. Make hundreds of thousands of them. Drop them into the middle of the patch.
...and watch nature grind the trash into negligible particulate.
Your Welcome, Dave Mowers

So the conclusion is that there's 50 kg of plastic per square kilometer?? (80,000,000kg/1,600,000sqkm) That's not a garbage patch, unless one ventures to call every corner of the earth one. I would not be surprised to find 50 kg of plastic waste in almost any given square kilometer that's routinely visited by humans.
This is a great example of fake scandal journalism, served without an iota of critical thought.

Two great comments. I'd like to add my twist to this. We know there is an issue. We know it will get worse before it gets better but if we start to do something about it now it will improve.
Stop telling us there is a problem, start giving us idea's how we can do things every day to improve our individual impact. millions of people creating a little bit of plastic waste every day will slowly start to have an affect. As will peoples innovative idea's for ways of removing and removing this material, then they can begin processing it. I know for example that you can create Petrol and Diesel from plastic. This will be a great use of waste plastic.

@aki009 Give me your contact details and I shout you free trip to one of the areas and then you can decide for yourself if this is scandal journalism or not. Hiding behind some fake name and commenting here on this site seems to be a very common thing. Same @ carol29 Regards,Marcel Hagener from NZ.

3 bags of old nets, and half a bucket of odds and ends does not equate to 800,000metric tons. No wonder they shoved "might be" in their results, not even a committed greenie is going to swallow this garbage.

Since we already have micro beads in our drinking water I don't doubt the size of it. We people are not responsible enough to be trusted to recycle plastic water bottles and plastic grocery bags. Take these two away and the problem gets minimal.

Recent studies have shown that 90%+ of ocean plastic comes from 10 rivers, 8 of those are in Asia. That might be a better place to focus efforts. Treat the disease, not just the symptoms.

@Christopher,there are heaps of videos online where you can see that there are enormous plastic islands virtually floating in the sea. How you dare to rate this article as "garbage" is sickening me. The discarded nets by the fishing industry are a massive problem. The packaging industry needs to come up with new materials which break down by UV light or similar into non toxic particles. I have been to China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil. I have been on beaches where I was walking only on rubbish for hundreds and hundreds of meters. Plastic,oil filters,etc.... worst was near Kota KInabalu. I do agree with Bruce that the source needs to be stopped which means re-education...which opens a "can of worms"....

I wondered what the next big eco-horror was going to be since AGW has clearly passed its sell-by date. Ocean acidification and a plethora of assorted varieties of influenza and haemorrhagic fevers failed to gain any traction, so now it's man-made plastics that are going to destroy the Planet and 'Civilisation As We Know It™' . And sure enough, as usual "it's worse than we thought!". Jolly good, carry on...

Isn't it nice that Gaia is collecting all this stuff together for us so we can clean up our mess? You go, girl!