Old link, but I hadn’t realized the caveat until today. Basically, most of the waste that’s accumulated in the GPGP is from industrial scale fishing (US, China, etc). I’ve long known that it isn’t a big island (you can’t even photograph it; it’s just slightly murky water for miles and miles), but for some reason I thought this implied that most oceanic waste is fishing related. That’s not right, see the wikipedia page.
My fish consumption has dropped dramatically since learning of this info (can’t cut it out entirely…be we try) and I do indeed spread the info as naturally as I can. So, agreed! It is indeed a great start.