Unraveling the mystery of the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch': Floating landfill twice the size of TEXAS in the North Pacific may get most of its plastic debris from eastern Asia, study reveals A new study set out to uncover the pathways that transports trash to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific, which contains 1.8 trillion pieces A probability model was created to see what pathways were transporting debris Researchers found a high-probability channel connecting Asia's eastern coast The team suggests that this may be a large source of plastic pollution