http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-39931042
An uninhabited island in the South Pacific is littered with the highest density of plastic waste anywhere in the world, according to a study.
Henderson Island, part of the UK's Pitcairn Islands group, has an estimated 37.7 million pieces of debris on its beaches. The island is near the centre of an ocean current, meaning it collects much rubbish from boats and South America.
Researchers hope people will "rethink their relationship with plastic".
The joint Australian and British study said the rubbish amounted to 671 items per square metre and a total of 17 tonnes.
http://m.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/09/1619818114
Wikipedia has coverage of Henderson Island and notes:
Henderson Island (formerly also San Juan Bautista and Elizabeth Island) is an uninhabited island in the south Pacific Ocean. It is one of the world's last two raised coral atolls whose ecosystems remain relatively unaffected by human contact, except that they are now subject to tonnes of plastic pollution that collects there, as observed in 2017[3]. Ten of its 51 flowering plants, all four of its land birds and about a third of the identified insects and gastropods are endemic – a remarkable diversity given the island's size.[4]
Measuring 9.6 kilometres (6.0 mi) by 5.1 kilometres (3.2 mi), it has an area of 37.3 square kilometres (14.4 sq mi) and is located 193 kilometres (120 mi) northeast of Pitcairn Island.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:24PM (2 children)
a total of 17 tonnes.
First of all I've seen 17 tons on "people of walmart" dot com and thats only like two or three ameriburgers.
Somewhat more seriously you can run a thermal depolymerization plant over 85% efficient in theory, we'll cut you 75% for planet earth small scale shippable, etc, so you burn about four and a quarter, heck we'll call it five tons to power the plant and get 12 tons of synthetic-ish diesel. If my math in my head is right, thats about 70 barrels of diesel.
Its not really all that much. Of course it depends how fast you harvest. If you could pull maybe half that annually (which seems reasonable?) the annual diesel harvest would be about 35 or so barrels.
The Pitcairns are not all that heavily populated, less than a hundred people. 35 barrels would kinda matter.
I think it a realistic-ish proposal to give them a TDP plant and a bunch of empty barrels and they have a sustainable ecologically positive source of electricity. I assume they already have generators and import more than 35 barrels a year of diesel.
Not even being a snarky smart ass, this really is a "no lose" non-greenwashing engineering proposal. There are small details like whos going to feed the guy who's running the plant, but maybe cheaper and more electricity makes it a net gain to the culture. Maybe not, hard to say.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:42PM
Oh, so you're one of those eco hippy millennials now. Grow up, faggot. You're not getting a participation trophy. Get over it.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:31PM
17 tonnes and whaddya get?
Other day older and your fingers are wet..
I never got bitten by a shark before
I owe my leg to the company store...
I owe my leg to the company store
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:24PM
Is 17 tonnes enough to interest a plastics recycler? Sounds like it's very concentrated, might not be too hard to collect. Maybe the UN or some NGO could come up with some subsidy.
While not at all "PC", I once asked an old line engineer on early recycling plants how the different type of plastic were separated. He looked sad and said, "Jose works for cheap."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:26PM (3 children)
If plastic collects there, is there an opportunity to collect that plastic? 37 million pieces is a LOT. Is there a way to use this ocean current which dumps plastic onto this island? 671 items per square metre and a total of 17 tonnes. That is a lot.
Don't call it a Remote Pacific Island, call it a Remote Plastic Island. If plastic floats this could be a godsend to seven stranded castaways on this 'uninhabited' island. They could rethink their relationship to plastic.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:01PM (2 children)
Think about those numbers for a minute. Given there are some quite sizeable objects in the picture accompanying there article, that means that there are going to be a lot of *very small* pieces of plastic included in those numbers. Further, those small pieces are going to be mixed in with the sand and any other flotsam and jetsam on the beach, so sorting the plastic from the rest might present a challenge in any clean-up efforts. It's also 193km from the main island (and, IIRC, the only one that's inhabited) in the Pitcairn group, which in itself is incredibly remote, so any clean up is going to need to be either sporadic and/or heavily automated (some industrialised variation of the Roomba, perhaps?), with quite severe logistical challenges as well.
That's not to say it can't be done, but the RoI is likely to be incredibly low and more likely very negative, unless you can factor in some kind of "feel good" factor, like efforts by Adidas' and others to make shoes from recycled plastic, that could maybe cash in on this by charging a premium price to recoup their costs. People are willing to pay a premium for Fairtrade products after all, so why not this? Given the position in the centre of the South Pacific gyre, it's reasonable to assume that plastic (and other things) will continue to wash up there, so the supply of raw material should be good - especially if (as seems likely) other islands in the vicinity can similarly be "farmed" as well. I doubt anyone is going to find a viable business model there, but who knows - if Chanel thinks $2k is a reasonable price for a boomerang as a fashion accessory (yes, really! [theguardian.com]), maybe $2k for a pair of recycled shoes isn't too far fetched either.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:31PM (1 child)
17 tons of styrene costs about twenty thousand bucks at normal retail prices for fresh unrecycled monomer. Yes I know it varies a hell of a lot but it vaguely averages about a buck per kilo plus or minus 100% or so.
I have enough chemistry background that sometimes I'll watch cars on a railroad while waiting for the train to pass, and figure out how much each payload is worth. I figured out once that one of those car transporters loaded with obese SUVs was worth something like 20 times as much as a fully loaded styrene tanker. Someday as the economy declines people are going to start pirating railroads. Anyway...
Now given an infinite amount of energy (and, admittedly, capital...) 17 or so tons of hydrocarbon feedstock gives 17 tons of any organic chemical you'd like. The ratio isn't 1:1 because I'm assuming an infinite supply of free H and O atoms, and frankly infinite free Cl and Na.
Anyway my point is an advanced enough drug cartel could launch a drone and come back with 17 tons of ... product. Any product.
We can assume doing this in your basement or back yard will result in a lot of unwanted government attention. However "in the middle of nowhere" might be a nice location for a total synthesis of pure THC oil, perhaps.
So yes there is little point in processing 17 tons of plastic into perfect reusable styrene, but a tanker ship full of 17 tons of perfect synthetic hash oil would probably make the whole project profitable.
Its an interesting wedge against "war against some drugs" governments... you don't want drone ships full of synthetic pure THC oil returning from the sea, well then stop dumping plastic in the sea and the problem will kinda fix itself.
Another fascinating idea... if patented copyrighted anti-cancer drugs cost $100K per shot, if a foreign cartel launched a total synthesis ship at $100K/shot how much would 17 tons be worth, even if sold 90% off on the gray / black market...
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:36PM
Ultimately, I think RoI vs. feel good factor rears its ugly head again. I can't imagine a drug producer putting feel good factor ahead of any potential profit, especially one with the resources for an operation of that scale, whereas I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to pay way over the odds for recycled plastic goods made from garbage recovered from an effort to clean up an honest to $deity tropical island. Especially amongst those that like to be *seen* to have done or bought something because they feel it's some making kind of statement about who/what they want to be seen as.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:36PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch [wikipedia.org]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:51PM (3 children)
Why should I care? I don't live there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:35PM (2 children)
Ah, the voice of apathy (or a bored troll?) --
1. See a shrink and do something about your depression?
2. Wake up and realize that the Earth is a closed ecosystem. While you may not live "there", we all live "here".
3. Stop using excess packaging and recycle when possible.
4. Given a choice, go for durable goods, not plastic throwaways.
...
Cleaner Earth = Profit!
...except for the companies that make crappy plastic stuff--but I don't work there so why should I care (grin)?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:11PM (1 child)
Cleaning up places I don't live just for some millennial crybabies seems like a waste of resources.
1. See a shrink about your desire to make people work for free.
2. The Earth is a big place.
3. I'll buy what's cheapest, thank you. I see no reason to spend $50 dollars for a loaf of bread at Whole Foods like a millennial hipster. No wonder they can't afford to buy houses.
4. I still have a socket set I bought for a summer job when I was 14 in 1952, back when people used to work for a living. Millennials just make throw-away crap that doesn't last after 2 uses.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Wednesday May 17 2017, @10:10PM
> I'll buy what's cheapest [...] Millennials just make throw-away crap that doesn't last after 2 uses.
Cheap goods don't always last a long time, in the sense of keeping their usefulness. The broken bits of plastic, of course, can persist in the environment for a long time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by leftover on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:57PM (2 children)
Wonderful. The problem of the hugely dispersed Pacific garbage patch has a solution
that mere humans could never duplicate.
In the short term, pick up the trash from all the beaches to seed recovery processing.
Long term, let seining boats do donuts around the island, close enough to take advantage
of the trash concentration but far enough to avoid wrecking the coral ecosystem.
Fund the operation for its cleanup role, let the local use the fuel for the boats.
If any Harvard MBAs show up to decry the low financial ROI, just throw them in the ocean.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:02PM
If any Harvard MBAs show up to decry the low financial ROI, just throw them in the ocean.
Make sure to cut them a little first, so they attract sharks.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @05:03PM
I wonder what the ROI would be on banning the education of more MBAs ? :-)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:44PM
I'm thinking if this is a low-land island without mountains, it will be under water soon and all that plastic will just float away.
No more problem, see. That was easy.
Oh, shit. wait.
I bought land on that island.
Well, at least the beach will be clean, and i can swim, so......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Thursday May 18 2017, @04:27AM
> World's Highest Plastic Trash Density
Written by someone who has never been to New Jersey.
(Score: 1) by Weasley on Thursday May 18 2017, @02:24PM
This is not a technological problem to solve. This is a much simpler problem. There's too many people. I'm 43. The population of the world has doubled since I was born. These problems will just keep getting worse, all because capitalists and powerful religious groups don't want to confront the idea of an end to constant growth.