CAN A TEENAGER'S INVENTION SAVE OCEANS FROM TONS OF PLASTIC DEBRIS?

Nineteen-year old inventor claims his device could clean up oceans from major plastic debris in five years.

Dutch engineering student BOYAN SLAT came up with the idea of a series of floating booms and processing platforms designed to collect floating plastic rubbish.

 

The 'ocean cleanup' concept is designed to capture the floating plastic but allow life like fish and plankton to pass through unharmed, while saving the waste materials to be recycled.

 

He proposes fixing sea water processors to the sea bed, which are also attached to the floating platform so that the water can move through them and generate energy.

 

His concept also includes using floating booms instead of nets to cover vast areas of water effectively, while no mesh and a very low speed, means there will be 'virtually no by-catch' and unfortunate animals getting tangled in nets that are meant to help conserve their habitat.

 

Plastic debris

 

Millions of tonnes of plastic debris are littering oceans and have accumulated in areas of high concentration called gyres - which are essentially floating rubbish tips.

 

This litter directly kills millions of aquatic animals annually but also spreads and introduces harmful algae and invasive species as well as man-made pollutants into the food chain, costing governments and organisations millions of dollars to clean up every year, according to Mr Slat.

 

Read more and see picture of inventor and his device - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2415889/Boyan-Slat-19-claims-invention-clean-worlds-oceans-just-years.html

 

 

A critical view:

 

No serious scientist or policy advocate believes that microplastic gyre cleanup is a real strategy for ridding micro-plastics from the oceans—not even The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

 

Industry often backs ‘gyre cleanup’ concepts because they give the impression that we can continue to consume more and more and good old human ingenuity will figure out how to solve all the environmental problems.

 

The public, for their part, loves the thought of a quick fix and wants to believe that a ‘boy genius’ can come along and solve a problem that all the old crusty PHDs can’t.

 

Gyre cleanup plays into the hand of industry, but worse, it diverts attention and resources from viable, but unsexy, multi-pronged and critically vetted solutions.

 

Read more - http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/

 

And read readers' comments critical of the above criticism - Very interesting too.

 

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THE TRASH VORTEX IN THE NORTH PACIFIC

 

The trash vortex is an area the size of Texas in the North Pacific in which an estimated six kilos of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton, along with other slow degrading garbage, swirls slowly around like a clock, choked with dead fish, marine mammals, and birds who get snared.

Some plastics in the gyre will not break down in the lifetimes of the grandchildren of the people who threw them away.
 

There is a sinister twist to all this as well. The plastics can act as a sort of "chemical sponge".

They can concentrate many of the most damaging of the pollutants found in the worlds oceans: the persistent organic pollutants (POPs).  So any animal eating these pieces of plastic debris will also be taking in highly toxic pollutants.

 

Read more and watch illustration of ocean currents as they carry the plastic debris -

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-vortex/

 

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PLASTIC MAY BE THE LEAST OF OUR PROBLEMS

 

Highly radioactive debris spewing from damaged Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant is already harming ocean life and it has the potential to destroy most life in the Pacific Ocean in a matter of years.  Nobody knows how to mitigate this disaster, which has been getting worse in the past two and a half years.  The media wants you to focus on the plastic and glosses over the much greater threat from Fukushima and all other existing nuclear power plants.

 

Read more - http://enenews.com/category/location/japan

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Link to this post - http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/09/can-teenagers-invention-save-oceans.html

 

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