A huge floating craft created to clean the Pacific Ocean can not collect plastic waste

The Ocean Cleanup System 001, a floating U-shaped barrier created by The Ocean Cleanup, arrived in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in October. But the system failed to retain the plastic, the organization said Tuesday.

Ocean dump sites are formed by rotating ocean currents called "gyres" that bring marine debris (trash, fishing gear and plastic) into one place, according to the National Ocean and Ocean Administration. 39; atmosphere. There are several in the ocean, including two in the Pacific.

Boyan Slat, founder of Ocean Cleanup, told CNN earlier this year that the patch contained about 1,800 billion pieces of plastic, weighing 80,000 metric tons.

Joost Dubois, Communications Manager at The Ocean Cleanup, told CNN in September that the system should be able to recover 50 tons of plastic from the ocean every year.

In an update released Tuesday, the organization says the system concentrates the plastic, but can not keep it.

"Finally, the only way to really see how the system worked was to create the environment for which it was designed," said the organization.

The organization says to work to identify the cause. One of the possible problems is that the system is not moving fast enough.

"It seems that the system sometimes moves more slowly than the plastic, which allows the plastic caught to leave the system again."

The organization also stated that the system, which they named Wilson, had an effect on the flow when it interacted with water, causing small plastic plates that moved and accumulated around the system. .

The organization also observed that the system creates waves, possibly preventing the plastic from entering the mouth of the device.

"We will continue to test and monitor the system until we can make the necessary changes, if any, that will subsequently be implemented," the organization said. "We are confident that these tests will tell us more about Wilson's current status, which hopefully will allow us to make the cleaning system operational soon."

Some critics have questioned the ambitious system of cleaning the oceans even before it reaches the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress, said that deploying a device of this size would create its own environment and that marine life would develop on or under it.

Goldstein also questions the efforts being made to collect the plastic in the middle of the ocean instead of attaching it in the first place to prevent the waste from reaching the l '. ocean. [ad_2]
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