This ocean cleaning system aims to collect 50 tons of plastic. But what?

On Saturday, a team led by 24-year-old Boyan Slat will be transporting a 600 meter spire system from San Francisco to Garbage Patch of the Great Pacific to clean the marine plastic. The launch of this highly anticipated project by its organization, Ocean Cleanup, marks the culmination of five years of research – surveying, prototyping, testing, reworking and other tests – not to mention the $ 31.5 million in funding.

"We hope that in the coming months, we will be able to prove that it works by taking the first plastic of the ocean to land. And of course, it will be a very historic moment, "says Slat, who imagined the project at 18.

The Grand Pacific Garbage Strip, which covers more than 600,000 square miles between California and Hawaii, contains about one-third of the plastic debris floating in the oceans. It is one of the five major ocean gyres in the world – huge areas where circular currents collect waste.

The Slat system is essentially an autonomous boom that floats around the ocean through wind and currents. "The ocean is a very difficult environment for engineers," he says.

The team eliminated the mechanical parts and maintained the flexible boom structure to help it adapt to the waves. (It should survive waves up to 20 meters high.) A skirt suspended 3 meters below the surface is a screen, not a net, to prevent animals from curling. The designers took into account the extra buoyancy to cope with plants, algae and other organisms that will attach to the system. There are sensors to follow it and estimate when it is full of plastic so that a ship can empty it.

After the launch, the team members of the team will stay with the system to determine if it traps the plastic. By April, they will know if it can withstand the winter storms. "The next few months will be exciting," says Slat.

If successful, this system will return 50 tons of plastic after one year of operation, he adds, adding that if the project reaches a maximum of 60 vehicles, it could clean half of the patches every five years.

But marine debris floating in the gyres is only a small fraction of plastic waste entering the ocean each year. Research suggests that 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year and estimates of what is happening in the 79,000 metric tons at 96,400 metric tons.

The total amount of plastic floating in the world's oceans represents "less than 1% of a year's plastic production," says Marcus Eriksen of the California-based Five Gyres Institute, which in 2014 participated in a global study on oceanic plastics. "After 50 years of litter in the ocean, only 1% of a year?"

He says that the vast majority of plastics are probably collected in coastal areas. "We think most of the coast starts are off the coast," he says.

That's why, for over 30 years, there has been a movement to pick up plastic waste and other garbage on beaches and shores. the International coastal cleaning – an annual event organized by the Ocean Conservancy – for example, will take place this year on September 15th.

"It seems insurmountable and we tend to look for technology and innovation to try to solve these problems," says Emily Woglom, Executive Vice President of Ocean Conservancy. But simply cleaning the beaches produces results, she says. In 2017, some 500,000 volunteers collected 9,000 tons of garbage worldwide in a single day.

"There are many oceanic mechanisms in the game, they quickly remove plastic from the system, "explains Eriksen, as washing the plastics on the banks. "If we can slow down the seizure, I am confident that in 10 years we will see a decline. There is no need to put as much emphasis, money and effort into cleaning.

However, it is difficult to ignore reports that a dead pilot whale with a belly full of plastic and a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in his nose. The plan to clean the oceans could reduce the suffering of wildlife, as long as it works.

And if that is the case, what could be done with the marine plastic that it carries?

Plastic waste was used to make roads, bottles of shampoo and computer packagingeven public art. Slat hopes to turn the collected debris into products that can help finance the next cleanup.

It will be a challenge, says John Warner, co-founder of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Massachusetts, who helped invent a pair of ocean plastic sneakers for Adidas in 2016. Because marine plastics contain many compositions, the shapes and colors, separating them into pure streams for traditional recycling would be prohibitively expensive. But using a mixture of plastics could compromise performance.

"It's going to take creativity and invention and find uses," he says. It also means that consumers and manufacturers must change their expectations for ocean plastic products: they will be expensive and will probably look strange.

Mixed ocean plastic usually produces a speckled or greyish-brown material. But it's a look we should embrace, Warner said, instead of trying to color. "If the goal is to make it impossible to distinguish virgin plastic, we miss the point".

He says the extra cost for ocean plastic products is justifiable, especially because it must be a temporary solution. "We do not want to go through this process forever," he says, on the treadmill of production, pollution, cleaning and manufacturing more and more products.

In the long term, the goal is to reduce the use of plastics (and eliminateuse plastics such as coffee stirrers) to prevent wastes from infiltrating into natural environments and to reinvent plastics so that they are degradable or recyclable, with competitive products subject to performance standards high. But in the short term, existing plastic pollution must be recovered – on land, in rivers and in the oceans. Giving monetary value to waste would speed up cleanup, especially in fast-growing communities that do not have adequate waste management infrastructure.

Jim Holm, Captain of the Navy and founder of Clean Oceans International, said transforming this plastic waste into energy is an interesting option for small island nations sensitive to plastic pollution, such as the federal states of Micronesia. This is a process that some activists have criticized for adding to air pollution and perpetuate a fossil fuel-based energy system, but advocates say it's a good way to destroy existing plastic waste anywhere.

Holm is working on a small converter capable of adapting to a boat – unlike the large, energy-intensive installations used in Europe – and turning plastic waste into a synthetic oil. An inter-island supply vessel, for example, could drop supplies and refuel with plastic waste and collected debris. Remote island communities often lack the recycling capacity or landfill capacity to properly manage plastic waste. The fuel produced by an on-board converter could complement the energy needs of the boat and offset the consumption of fossil fuels.

"It brings benefits to people who have the problem and motivates them to clean the beach," says Holm. "This allows us to save on our carbon footprint, save on our economic footprint and manage the plastic problem where it is happening today."

But it can not be overemphasized that the best solution is prevention. Reduce as much as possible the use of plastic, strengthen waste management, redraw materials for reuse and recycle easily and never leave anything to the beach or in any other natural environment are all part of the puzzle .

"There is a whole host of things to do, from the consumer to the plastic supply chain, to large corporations and consumer goods companies, to local governments and municipalities, to national funding for consumer goods. international Development. and the UN, "said Woglom of the Ocean Conservancy. "We will have to tackle this from all sides."

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