Floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a man-made island of plastic, invisible to the naked eye, that’s twice the size of Texas. The refuse was born of decades of dumping plastic containers, bottles and other material that gradually collected in the North Pacific because of ocean circulation patterns that trapped the garbage. Worn down by sunlight and waves, the plastic has disintegrated into tiny pieces that can’t be seen from ships or satellites, but is still capable of causing problems for the food chain as fish consume the plastic and humans eat the fish.