THE OCEAN CLEAN-UP: CLEANING UP THE GARBAGE PATCHES

Plastics are here, there, everywhere! Plastics are in our homes, in our schools, colleges, offices, restaurants, trash cans, in our food (yes, you must have heard of micro plastics) in our oceans.

 

Our oceans are filled with huge amount of plastic trash, here huge means insanely huge which is a very serious problem. Each year, around 8 million metric tonnes of plastic make their way into the oceans. Presently, oceans are polluted with around 5 trillion tons of plastic waste (estimated figure which can be even more). Most of the plastics are carried into the oceans by river channels. Marine life often confuse plastic for prey, that proves to be potentially deadly for animals, while others get trapped in the discarded fishing nets or “ Ghost gear”. On the top of this, ocean plastic contains toxic chemicals which enters into food chain and ultimately affects human health. Scientists have assumed that there will be more plastic in oceans than marine life by 2050.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP)

Debris entering into the oceans easily gets trapped in their circulating currents and accumulates in ocean’s five gyres or garbage patches. One of the largest patches is located between Hawaii and California that is referred as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” It is the biggest accumulation of plastic in the world’s oceans with 79000 tons of plastic and spans more than 617,000 square miles area (which is even larger than some European countries). This so much amount of plastic will affect our ecosystems, health and economies, if left to circulate in the oceans.

The Ocean Clean-up Project

It is established by Boyan Slat in 2013. The Ocean Clean-up is a non- governmental organization headquartered in Delft, Netherlands that aims to develop advanced technology to eliminate plastic from the oceans. All the conventional methods e.g. vessels and nets would take thousands of years and tens of billions of dollars to clean-up the largest “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” The ocean clean-up designed a passive floating mobile system that is estimated to eliminate 50% of Great Pacific Garbage patch within a period of five years and at very little cost relative to conventional methods. This system is chosen to have passive design because for an area of this size active clean-up methods would be too energy exhaustive but this clean-up system functions on natural forces such as wind, waves, and current to carry both plastic and system. What is Basel Convention?

The first prototype –system 001 was deployed in San Francisco in September 2018 to collect plastic from “GPGP” but it ran into difficulty after two months and was towed to shore in January 2019. In June 2019, an upgraded version –system 001/B was deployed after some alterations. On 2^nd October 2019, the foundation declared that the system 001/B had passively collected plastic from GPGP and have proven its foundational concept. Now the foundation is working on to develop first full scale, fully operational clean-up system (system 002), set to be operational in 2021. The foundation is also working on to intercept the flow of plastic from river to ocean.

How this technology works?

The debris in ocean is spread across millions of square km and in all directions so it is not easy to clean-up the garbage patches. So this technology has been designed in such a way that it concentrates the plastic first before removing it from the ocean.  

A long floater that provides buoyancy to the entire system sits at the surface of water and the skirt that hangs beneath it prevents debris from escaping underneath and leads it into the retention system. A cork line above the skirt prevents overtopping and keeps the skirt afloat. Both the plastic and system is carried by the natural forces and to catch the plastic there should be a difference between the speed of plastic and system. That is why a sea anchor is used to slow down the system so that plastic can be easily captured.

Conclusion

Plastics are very useful product, which are used in numerous ways, but we need to learn to use them intelligently. We all must adopt sustainable consumption behaviour, and try to encourage recycling of plastic wastes so that it not end up in the oceans and affecting our marine life. We must try to minimise the use of plastics bags and other single use plastics and look for alternatives such as “Bio-plastics”

 

 

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