Floating Trash on the riachuelo (La Boca, Buenos Aires)

No, this is not the Great Pacific Garbage Patch!

Half of the trash is made of plastic bottles. Plastic bottles (especially mineral water bottles) are evil. Please drink tap water (or purified / filtered tap water if needed).

Sale of plastic bottles should not be permitted in countries that do not recycle plastic trash.

And in countries where plastic trash is recycled, there should be a tax on plastic bottles, used to finance recycling and to encourage people to bring their plastic trash to recycling centers where they would get that tax back. This is the case in many states in the US, and a lot of unemployed people make money by scavenging plastic trash and bringing it to recycling centers, where they get paid for the trash they bring. As a result, there is much less plastic trash in the environment.

One example is the California CRV: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Redemption_Value.