In May 2013 we did a blog post about a
young man named Boyan Slat who had an interesting idea for cleaning up the
plastic that is caught in the earth's ocean gyres. At the time, the pollution problem,
the clean-up concept, a few diagrams, and expressions of interest and
encouragement from various parties were all that could be examined. A feasibility
study had yet to be done on Mr. Slat’s idea.
I wanted to do an update to the May 2013
blog post because it has been persistently popular among our visitors and is
actually increasing in popularity lately. The increased interest can probably
be traced to the fact that the feasibility study has finally been completed and
a crowdfunding campaign is in its final stages at this time of writing.
During the feasibility studies, the concept
seems to have evolved somewhat. However, the core idea of funneling plastic
debris from at / near the water surface is still intact. The Ocean Cleanup organization
remains confident that their floating array can “remove almost half the plastic
from the North Pacific Garbage patch in 10 years, while being an estimated
7900x faster and 33x cheaper than conventional methods.” – from their website.
They are also interested in expanding the
scope of the concept to “river deltas and other waterways that transport
plastic to the oceans. This could provide a rapid reduction of the influx of
new plastics into the oceans.”
A copy of the feasibility study executive
summary is available here.
This study has enabled Boyan Slat move
forward with having a positive discussion in response to some of the various questions and criticisms initially raised
about the concept. The next steps are to develop detailed engineering, scale up
the testing, and continue the research.
At present, there are opportunities for
anyone to assist with funds or with expertise.
Edit Dec 23/2014 - We noticed this recent article on the Chem.info website about another study of the ocean plastic problem.
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