You don't have to be an environmentalist to find this a little scary.

Old bottle caps and some dried leaves on the beach? 

 Not quite.  (See photos)

Another link from tbird. The pictures relate to this story.

It seems that the currents in the Pacific Ocean are forming large floating patches of plastic detritus.  This is becoming a concern because of the larger harm to marine life, fishing and tourism.

I don't care what your politics are.  

Can we all agree that this is one ugly problem? 

I don't know what they'll figure out as a solution to this.  The plastic genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, and it's not going back in.  Plastics are too integral to human life at this point and that's just a fact.

I'm not what I would call a macro-environmentalist.  I would consider myself a micro-environmentalist.  In other words, I think global warming is a socialist scam of the highest order.  But on the other hand, I hate trash and litter with a passion.  This thing that's going on in the ocean is ugly and potentially dangerous.  We should be able to come up with an answer that doesn't require us to revert back to the Middle Ages.