A pile of trash that has been floating at sea for 15 years may have finally found a home in Florida. The pile — which began as 14,000 tons of municipal waste from Philadelphia in 1986 — has been rejected by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Singapore, as well as the states of Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia. Some portion of the pile was disposed of in Haiti, while other parts seemed to have been dumped illegally into the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Florida officials have given tentative approval to incinerate the remaining 3,000 tons, but environmentalists and locals are protesting the plan, saying the waste contains toxic metals.
