100hitz - Hot Hitz of stressed-out holidaymakers arrive on these shores every year. But they are not alone. It turns out when we throw something away, there is a good chance this could be where it turns up. Vast swirling currents gather up all the tonnes of waste we throw into the sea, creating enormous floating rubbish dumps. The beautiful Hawaiian beaches are right in the path of one of these vast oceans of waste. The most lethal is the plastic. Plastic never breaks down so every yoghurt pot, Frisbee and washing-up bowl in creation is still out there somewhere being broken down into smaller and smaller pieces. Once these pieces get small enough, they have another devastating effect. One of the problems is that as these microscopic plastic particles get into the food chain, they mimic hormones and these hormones can affect the life cycles. They can turn some of the marine shellfish into hermaphrodites. That basically means they can't reproduce and that means the whole life cycle of certain species could be disrupted forever. In the long term, this could mean we see mass extinction of certain types of marine animal and plant. Every minutes, we produce , 100hitz - Hot Hitz tonnes of plastic worldwide, the majority of which will end up being thrown away. The greatest irony is that nature could be just as capable of dealing with our waste problems. Off the coast of Hawaii, the oceans teem with trillions of these strange creatures - salps. Bizarre, gelatinous, jellyfish-like creatures. And these salps' favourite food is phytoplankton who, in turn, like to eat CO in our atmosphere. Great shoals of these salps could ultimately be our most effective protection against global warming. A protection that nature itself has created. The salp will take a phytoplankton, convert it into detrital matter and excrete it. That matter will sink to the sea bed. It locks the carbon from the phytoplankton in the seabed for millions of years. If we look at the rainforest as a comparison, a tree has a lifespan of maybe - years. So the tree is locking up carbon for a much shorter period. We're talking tens to hundreds of years rather than millions of years. Back up in orbit, our whirling astronauts are continually reminded how much our planet does to protect and sustain its cornucopia of life. In the darkness of night, they will witness one amazing example of this in action. The northern and southern lights flickering around the poles. Our planet is under constant bombardment from highly charged plasma escaping from the surface of the sun. But we are protected from this solar wind by a magnetic field that extends out from the poles, enveloping the planet in a protective bubble. Without this, the Earth would be hell, blasted by radiation. The flickering illumination of the northern and southern lights are the edges of this protective magnetic field in action. Good morning, 100hitz - Hot Hitz. A special good morning to you today, Piers. 'And good morning to everyone down there on the home planet. 'We are awake and ready for another day.' Along with a new crew, the shuttle missionhas delivered dozens of new experiments to the International Space Station.