A North Shore man is embarking on a mission to see the world's largest floating rubbish pile, after seven years of helping clean up the Waitemata Harbour on a daily basis.

Hayden Smith captains the Waitemata Harbour Clean Up Trusts vessel - the MV Phil Warren - and helps remove rubbish from the Auckland harbour every day.

This Saturday, Mr Smith will fly via seaplane into the middle of the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' - the world's largest floating rubbish pile, located in the northern Pacific Ocean. Here, he will board the marine research vessel Algalita and meet the man who discovered the garbage patch, Captain Charles Moore. Mr Smith has paid his own way to embark on the journey.

The garbage patch, estimated to cover an area twice the size of the continental United States, continues to grow and stretches from 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. The pile has been formed over time as ocean currents carry litter dumped in waterways to the northern Pacific Ocean convergence zone.

"The majority of waste found in the garbage patch has come from land and travelled down through stormwater outlets from every country around the world. It gets trapped in the Pacific Gyres because of the circular ocean currents in this area and this has led to a build up of plastic and other debris in a huge floating garbage patch.

"My purpose for joining this voyage is to film the garbage patch, build international contacts and look for ways and means to solve the garbage problem. The responsibility of dealing with the rubbish and protecting the future of our oceans lies with us all," says Hayden Smith.

International representatives from political, environmental, media, scientific and celebrity backgrounds will also be on board the Algalita for a forum on how to help combat the problem of rubbish in the world's oceans.

The Earth's oceans are said to contain 10 million tonnes of floating plastic waste - 80 per cent of that comes from land and 20 per cent is litter from ships at sea. Rather than biodegrading, plastic in the ocean photodegrades into smaller plastic pieces. The floating pieces resemble food for marine life and are often eaten by jellyfish, birds, sea turtles and other marine creatures.