Our Oceans Should Be Able To Breathe A Bit Easier (A Look at the Ocean Cleanup)

Unless you live near a large body of water or travel frequently, the cleanliness of oceans probably isn’t on your mind on a regular basis. For Boyan Slat, a Dutch inventor, he started ‘The Ocean Cleanup Foundation’ in 2012 in the hopes to develop technology that would help solve many problems, with the biggest being the health of our aquatic animals (Singh 2013). Now after nearly 10 years from this initial dream, and over 20 million dollars in funding (The Ocean Cleanup Foundation 2017), Slat is a mere 4 days away from the official end of the 12-week testing campaign in the Pacific by the name of ‘system 002. Going also by the name ‘jenny’, “is the ocean cleanup’s latest iteration of the project, featuring a large-scale cleanup system. it works by dragging a tensioned, 800-meter long artificial coastline through areas of the ocean where plastic has accumulated” ( Neira, 2021). It works with the help of two vessels moving at 1.5 knots pulling “jenny” on each side, forming a U-shaped barricade that collects all the floating plastics within the area.

(The Ocean Cleanup)

The system is currently finishing up its testing phase in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, where they have been doing a number of tests. One of them was a 6-week test that was able to see the full ability of ‘jenny’ and had phenomenal success.

(The Ocean Cleanup)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest collection of ocean plastic in the world located in the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. The patch is the combination of Western and Eastern Garbage Patches, which go from Japan to Hawaii/California, USA (National Geographic Society, 2012).

(*www.MarineDebris.noaa.gov)*

The garbage patch consists mainly of plastics and microplastics. Microplastics are what form when plastic breaks into tinier and tinier pieces, as they are unable to properly break down.

(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

The Ocean foundation even has a plan of what to do with the retrieved plastic. As of now, they are making $200 pairs of sunglasses, with the revenue being distributed back into the company.

One of the drawbacks of the new system 002 is that it only is able to capture floating plastic, and a study which was published in 2020 suggests that there are more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the ocean, as there is floating on the surface (Barrett et al., 2020). Having any amount of cleanup of the ocean is a step in the right direction, but the full cleanup task is still very far away.

Another issue with the current system is the requirement for the two vessels, which require fuel in order to pull the device around. Figuring out a way to make the entire operation sustainable will be key to the success of the project (Bendix, 2021).

This technological invention helps move the needle in the right direction towards sustainability from the world view as we mentioned in week 3. But there still remains much more work to do, in order to help restore our oceans back to a respectable level of cleanliness. Boyan Slat is helping to bring awareness to this issue with good news for people to share, but without the economies of scale to launch these systems in many parts of the world, the problem still has a long way to go before it can become a case study.

References

Neira, J. (2021, October 13). The ocean cleanup tests its massive system 002 to great success. Designboom. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.designboom.com/technology/the-ocean-cleanup-system-002-test-10-12-2021/.

Barrett, J., Chase, Z., Zhang, J., Holl, M. M., Willis, K., Williams, A., Hardesty, B. D., & Wilcox, C. (2020). Microplastic pollution in deep-sea sediments from the Great Australian Bight. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.576170

Bendix, A. (2021, October 15). A half-mile installation just took 20,000 pounds of plastic out of the Pacific — proof that ocean garbage can be cleaned. Business Insider. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.businessinsider.com/ocean-cleanup-device-removed-plastic-pacific-garbage-patch-2021-10.

National Geographic Society, C.-S. (2012, October 9). Great Pacific Garbage Patch. National Geographic Society. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/.

The Ocean Cleanup Foundation. (2017, May 3). The ocean cleanup raises 21.7 million USD in donations to start Pacific cleanup trials: Press releases. The Ocean Cleanup. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://theoceancleanup.com/press/press-releases/the-ocean-cleanup-raises-217-million-usd-in-donations-to-start-pacific-cleanup-trials/.

Singh, T. (2013, March 26). 19-year-old develops ocean cleanup array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans. Inhabitat Green Design Innovation Architecture Green Building. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://inhabitat.com/19-year-old-student-develops-ocean-cleanup-array-that-could-remove-7250000-tons-of-plastic-from-the-worlds-oceans/.