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Engineers have set to sea to deploy a rubbish-collection device to corral plastic litter floating between California and Hawaii in an attempt to clean up the world's largest rubbish patch in the heart of the Pacific Ocean.
Key points:
- System created by The Ocean Cleanup, founded by 24-year-old Dutch innovator Boyan Slat
- 600-meter long device has a 3-meter deep screen that traps and collects
- Carrier vessel will be collected to collect all plastics and transport it to dry land for recycling
The 600-meter-long floating boom was towed from San Francisco to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – an island of rubbish almost the size of Queensland.
The system was created by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Boyan Slat, a 24-year-old innovator from the Netherlands.
Mr Slat first became passionate about cleaning up the oceans when he went scuba diving in the Mediterranean Sea, and saw more plastic bags than fish.
"The plastic is really persistent," Mr Slat said.
He said researchers working with his organization had gone back to the 1960s and 1970s bobbing in the patch.
The buoyant, U-shaped barrier made of plastic with a tapered 3-meter deep screen is designed to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the garbage patch, but allowing marine life to swim safely beneath it.
Fitted with solar power lights, cameras, antennas and sensors antennas, the cleaning system will communicate to the position, it will be recycled, Mr Slat said.
Shipping containers filled with fishing net, plastic bottles, laundry and other plastic scooped up by the system are expected to be back on land within a year, he said.
Plans to scale up to 'fleet' of barriers if technology works
Mr Slat said he would pay close attention to the system and work with his harsh ocean conditions, including huge waves.
He said he was most looking forward to a ship.
"We still have to prove the technology … which will then allow us to scale up a fleet of systems," he said.
The Ocean Cleanup, which has raised $ US35 million in donations to fund the project, from Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, will deploy 60 free-floating barriers in the Pacific Ocean by 2020.
"One of our goals is to remove 50 per cent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in five years," Mr Slat said.
The free-floating barriers are made to withstand harsh weather conditions and constant wear and tear.
They will stay in the water for two decades and collect 90 per cent of the garbage in the patch, he added.
Chief scientist at environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, George Leonard, said he was skeptical Mr Slat could be more successful in the future.
"We at the Ocean Conservancy are highly skeptical but we hope it works," he said.
"The ocean needs all the help it can get."
Approach should include prevention, education: scientist
Mr Leonard said 8 million tonnes of plastics are entering the ocean and that it is necessary to include a multi-pronged approach.
"If you do not stop plastics flowing into the ocean, it will be a Sisyphean task," Mr Leonard said.
He added that on September 15 about 1 million volunteers around the world will be joining the Ocean Conservancy's annual International Coastal Cleanup.
Volunteers last year collected about 10,000 tons of plastics worldwide over two hours, he said.
Mr Leonard also raised concerns marine and wildlife could become tangled.
He said he hoped that he would be able to communicate with the public about what happens with the first deployment.
"Mr. Leonard said," He has a very large goal and we certainly hope it works, but we are not going to know it.
"We have to wait and see."
The system will act as a "big boat that stands still in the water" and will have a screen and not a net so that there is nothing for marine life to get entangled with.
As an extra precautionary measure, a boat carrying experienced marine biologists will be deployed to make sure of the harming wildlife, Mr Slat said.
"I'm the first to acknowledge that it's important to collect plastic on the land and enter the ocean," he said.
"But I think this can be more than one thing at a time to tackle this problem."
AP
topics:
environment,
environmental-technology,
environmental-impact
environmental-management,
environmental-health,
united-states,
pacific
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