RE: Despite being a national park that has banned plastic bags, authorities still had to clean up 22 tonnes of garbage from the coast of the Galápagos Islands so far this year

[ribbitingscience]

Unfortunately the Galapagos are directly impacted by the currents that have also helped form the South Pacific Garbage Patch. Until we start eliminating the sources of it into the ocean and find successful methods of cleaning such waste (there's a few in testing but I don't know if they've made much progress recently) the situation will only continue. Either way, the government will have plenty of practice cleaning beaches over the coming decades.