[mostly_harmless]

Maybe a dumb question, but why? I don't like that it exists, but isn't it self-contained? The main reason for cleaning it up seems to be quoted as [1], which oversimplfies to 'animals might eat plastic, and it affects them', and it will make microplastics. But these problems seem to be localized to the garbage patch. I could see it as a asbestos situation where its only problematic if you disturb it. Ongoing dumping seems to be a bigger problem as it's not localized.

[1] - https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s435...

[EnigmaFlare]

Yea, desire to fix a lot of environmental issues is driven by worry about the unknown consequences, which can be a genuine reason but it's hard to know how much you can justify spending on it, and willful ignorance because worrying about the environment is fashionable. It might turn out to be harmless or even beneficial, you never know. The article says the plastic costs up to $2.5T annually but doesn't specify a lower bound, so I assume the minimum cost is negative. It doesn't help that reporters use these dirty salesman tricks to fool people the same way a shop having sale might advertise "up to 50% off all stock" when really only a small minority of products have such a big discount.