Millions of tons of plastic debris pollute the world's oceans. Plastic reaches the oceans mostly from land through rivers and waterways, then accumulates in five areas of high concentration, called gyres. One of them, the North Pacific Gyre, is roughly twice the size of the United States.
These bits of plastic look like food to fish and birds; once consumed they end up killing these animals. Moreover, these plastic bits also contain chemicals, such as DDTs and PCBs, which once consumed by small sea creatures, enter the food chain to be consumed eventually by people.
The ultimate solution to plastic pollution is clear; we need to close the tap, by ending our reliance on disposable plastic items and packaging. We need proper waste management globally, and we need to become aware of the problems our garbage is creating.
It will require drastic changes on legislative, industrial and individual levels of society.
However, even if we close the tap, we need to get out what is already trapped by the currents of the gyres. What to do?
Young entrepreneur Boyan Slat wants to develop an array of floating devices designed to clean up the more than 7 million tons of plastic bits suspended in the top layer of the gyres.
In a TED talk, Slat detailed his plan. Bearing in mind that we need to minimize financial, environmental and transportation costs, we can depend on the oceanic currents moving around instead of moving around the ocean through the arrays by fixing the ships to the seabed and let the rotating current do the rest. In this case, we can save massive amount of human resources, funds and emissions.
The array would be made of manta-ray-shaped platforms connected in a zigzag pattern and affixed to the seabed. Ocean currents would drive plastic debris toward the platforms, which would be powered by the Sun and wave action. Long, floating booms would be used to sift plastics from the water with very little bycatch.
According to current estimations recycling benefits would significantly outweigh the costs of executing the project. Although the quality of the plastic is somewhat lower than ordinary recycled plastic, it could for example be mixed with other plastics to produce high-quality products.
The Ocean Cleanup array will not obstruct shipping routes. It will be parallel to those routes, preventing any issues. Besides, most gyres are located in scarcely sailed areas.
The Ocean Cleanup plans to develop spin-offs of our passive collection technology for implementation in river deltas and other waterways that transport plastic to the oceans. This could provide a rapid reduction of new plastics into the oceans.
We need to believe in ourselves to execute such a project remembering that we created this mess, and by first we invented the material that led to this mess.
References
http://mashable.com/2013/03/27/ocean-array-plastic/
http://www.theoceancleanup.com/
http://www.boyanslat.com/TEDx/
http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/ocean-array-7-million-tons-plastic-130326.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
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