A massive boom hopes to correct plastic waste from the Pacific Ocean

SAN FRANCISCO – Engineers set off Saturday to deploy garbage collection to protect plastic waste floating between California and Hawaii to clean up the largest garbage area in the world in the heart of the Pacific Ocean .

The 2000-foot-long floating dam was towed from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a trash island twice as big as Texas.

The system was created by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Boyan Slat, a 24-year-old Dutch innovator who was passionate about cleaning the oceans when he diveed at age 16 in the Mediterranean and saw more of plastic. bags only fish.

"The plastic is really persistent and it does not go away on its own and the time to act is now," Slat said, adding that his organization's researchers found that plastic dates back to the 1960s and 1970s.

The U-shaped floating barrier, made of plastic and equipped with a 10-foot-deep conical screen, is designed to act as a shoreline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists believe swirl in this gyre. swim safely below.

Equipped with solar lamps, cameras, sensors and satellite antennas, the cleaning system will communicate its position at any time, allowing a support vessel to fish the plastic collected every few months and transport it to dry land. where it will be recycled. lamella

Shipping containers filled with fishing nets, plastic bottles, laundry baskets and other plastic scrap picked up by the system deployed on Saturday should be put back to shore within a year or so. he adds.

Slat said that he and his team would ensure that the system works efficiently and withstands harsh ocean conditions, including huge waves. He said he was looking forward to a plastic-laden ship coming back to port.

"We have yet to prove the technology … which will then allow us to evolve a fleet of systems," he said.

The Ocean Cleanup, which raised $ 35 million in donations to support the project, including Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel will deploy 60 floating barriers in the Pacific Ocean. here 2020.

"One of our goals is to remove 50% of the garbage area of ​​the Greater Pacific from here five years," said Slat.

Floating barriers are designed to withstand bad weather and constant wear. They will stay in the water for two decades and collect 90% of the waste in the patch, he added.

George Leonard, chief scientist of the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, said he was skeptical because even though plastic waste can be removed from the ocean, many things flock every year.

"At Ocean Conservancy, we are very skeptical, but we hope it will work," he said. "The ocean needs all possible help."

Leonard said that 9 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean each year and that a solution must include a multi-pronged approach, including preventing plastic from reaching the ocean and improving education for consumers reduce their consumption of disposable plastic containers and bottles.

"If you do not prevent plastics from flowing into the ocean, it will be a sisyphean task," said Leonard, citing the Greek myth of a task never completed. He added that on September 15, about 1 million volunteers around the world will collect garbage on beaches and streams as part of the annual cleanup of the Ocean Conservancy's international shores. Last year, volunteers collected around 10,000 tonnes of plastics worldwide in two hours, he added.

Leonard also raised concerns that the net and marine fauna could become entangled below the surface. He stated that he hoped that Slat's group was transparent with his data and that he was sharing information with the public about what was happening during the first deployment.

"He has set a very broad and ambitious goal and we hope it will work, but we really will not know until it is rolled out," said Leonard. "We have to wait and see."

The system will act as a "great boat immobile in the water" and will have a screen and not a net so that marine life is not entangled. As an extra precaution, a boat carrying experienced marine biologists will be deployed to ensure the device does not harm wildlife, Slat said.

"I am the first to admit that this has never been done before and that it is important to collect the plastic on the ground and close the plastic faucets entering the ocean, but I also think that humanity can do more than one thing this problem, "said Slat.