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from the have-you-tried-not-putting-it-in-in-the-first-place dept.
Ocean Cleanup Device Shows It Can Remove Plastic From the Pacific:
It's been nearly a decade since Boyan Slat announced at age 18 that he had a plan to rid the world's oceans of plastic.
Slat, now 27, is a Dutch inventor and the founder of the Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that aims to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.
That goal has often seemed unattainable. The Ocean Cleanup launched its first attempt at a plastic-catching device in 2018, but the prototype broke in the water. A newer model, released in 2019, did a better job of collecting plastic, but the organization estimated that it would need hundreds of those devices to clean the world's oceans.
Scientists and engineers began to question whether the group could deliver on the tens of millions of dollars it had acquired in funding.
But over the summer, the organization pinned its hopes on a new device, which it nicknamed Jenny. The installation is essentially an artificial floating coastline that catches plastic in its fold like a giant arm, then funnels the garbage into a woven funnel-shaped net. Two vessels tow it through the water at about 1.5 knots (slower than normal walking speed), and the ocean current pushes floating garbage toward the giant net.
In early August, the team launched Jenny in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a trash-filled vortex between Hawaii and California. The garbage patch is the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world, encompassing more than 1.8 trillion pieces, according to the Ocean Cleanup's estimates.
Last week, Jenny faced its final test as the organization sought to determine whether it could bring large amounts of plastic to shore without breaking or malfunctioning. The Ocean Cleanup said the device hauled 9,000 kilograms, or nearly 20,000 pounds, of trash out of the Pacific Ocean — proof that the garbage patch could eventually be cleaned up.
"Holy mother of god," Slat tweeted that afternoon, adding, "It all worked!!!"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday October 22 2021, @05:45PM (2 children)
Actually it's far worse than that. It's estimated that 8 million tons of new plastic enter the ocean *every year*
At 9 tons in a week they'd need 17,000 of these things operating non-stop just to keep the problem from getting worse.
Plus, it looks like they're mostly just cleaning up the big chunks, which are actually only a small fraction of the total plastic in a garbage patch, most of which has broken down into a slurry that still has terrible ecological consequences. So really, keeping the problem from getting worse is the most it can hope for.
I mean, kudos for doing *something* I guess - that's more than I've done on the problem. But nobody has ever doubted that you can pull trash out of the ocean, only whether it can be done cost-effectively. And if you need one of these for every three ships in the world, just to hold the line? That doesn't sound super cost-effective to me. Though, hey, a lot better than anything that came before, so at least things are improving. I definitely don't want to piss on technological progress just because it's still only taking the first steps on a long journey. It just still looks like the only realistic solution is to eliminate plastic waste, rather than trying to clean it up after the fact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 24 2021, @01:52AM (1 child)
In fairness this is just their first working prototype. Once they are operational they can start improving the design. Reigning in dumping is its own issue and needs to be addressed independently, but cleanup needs to happen either way.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday October 24 2021, @03:20AM
You do have to start somewhere, it's true. I don't now that it's worth trying to deploy at scale at this stage, but it is worth continuing to work on, and may even be worth deploying for particular problem spots. Clean up the currents just before they blight the local beaches, that sort of thing. Seems like river cleanup projects have been gaining momentum in that regard. Nothing in the face of the whole problem, but it's *something*, and does help fund the further improvement of the technology.