There are thousands of tons of plastic floating in the oceans. One group trying to collect it just got a boost.

The accumulated floating plastic known as Great Pacific Garbage Patch it is 620,000 square miles – almost twice the size of Texas. One group is trying to clean up more than 100,000 tons of trash, a football field full of trash every five seconds.

Since 2019, Cleaning the ocean has been collecting floating plastics for later recycling. And with a new $15 million donation from the Helmsley Charitable Trust – tied to World Oceans Day on June 8 – the group will continue its efforts to remove the trasha $189 million project that aims to remove 15 million pounds of plastic.

Removing plastics now helps prevent “ecological time bomb“by not allowing these plastics to turn into microplastics,” Matthias Egger, head of environmental and social affairs at Ocean Cleanup, told CBS News.

Marine life that consumes plastics can be eaten by larger prey, which in turn can be eaten by humans who end up consuming these early plastics at the beginning of the food chain. Microplastics are found everywhere now – from people’s lungs to Mother breast milk.

“We are very concerned about the amount of plastics in the oceans and the health risks posed by plastics breaking down, entering our food chain and eventually entering our bodies,” said Walter Panzirer, director of Helmsley , which focuses on access to health care, told CBS News. “There are several scientific studies showing the negative health outcomes of microplastics on the human body.”

The latest iteration of the organization’s system, funded by the Helsmley grant, involves a ship, which takes about five days to reach the site, the largest plastic accumulation zone in the world. The ship then drags a barrier nearly a mile long, at approximately walking pace, to collect the plastic. AI monitoring allows the ship to navigate towards areas with the highest plastic density, and underwater cameras monitor any marine animal life caught in the “retention zone”. If an animal is spotted, a safety hatch opens to allow the animal to escape.

“It was mind-blowing,” says Egger, who completed the trip to the patch twice. “You have a pristine environment. It’s a beautiful open ocean and you see a toothbrush floating, you see a children’s toy floating. You realize that the extent of the pollution that we have caused is so great that we have created this patch of garbage in the middle of the open ocean, away from humans.”

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is named after oceanographer Charles J. Moore, who coined the term after returning from a regatta in 1997. About 85 percent of marine debris is plastic, according to the United Nations. Once these plastics enter an ocean gyre or vortex, they remain there until they degrade into microplastics.

“This waste doesn’t go anywhere, it stays in that location for the most part, decomposes and enters our food system,” said Panzierer, from the trust. “It’s very important for us to work collectively as an entire society to eliminate this, because it not only brings health problems to America, but it has health problems for the entire world.”

Ocean plastics harm marine life, also. Animals often mistake plastics for food due to their size and color, which can lead to malnutrition. Sea turtles caught in fisheries operating around the spot may have up to 74% of their diets made up of ocean plastics, according to The Ocean Cleanup.

And ocean wildlife can be caught and die in discarded fishing nets, also known as ghost nets, which make up 46% of the garbage patch’s mass, according to the Ocean Cleanup.

In addition to the health effects of plastic pollution in the oceans, there are also economic costs – plastics in the ocean cost an estimated $13 billion a year, including cleanup costs and financial losses for fishing and other industries, according to the United Nations. The new funding will help the organization, which relies on donations, transition to use the new and more efficient cleaning system and increase it.

Cleaning up the entire patch, Egger said, would cost billions.

The United Nations is currently negotiating a global plastics treaty that aims to develop a legally binding agreement to combat plastic pollution by the end of 2024.