Henderson Island lies in the South Pacific, halfway between New Zealand and Chile. No one lives there. It is about as far away from anywhere and anyone on Earth.

Yet, on Henderson’s white sandy beaches, you can find articles from Russia, the United States, Europe, South America, Japan, and China. All of it is trash, most of it plastic. It bobbed across global seas until it was swept into the South Pacific gyre, a circular ocean current that functions like a conveyor belt, collecting plastic trash and depositing it onto tiny Henderson’s shore at a rate of about 3,500 pieces a day.

Jennifer Lavers, co-author of a new study of this 38-million-piece accumulation, told the Associated Press she found