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Indian Ocean garbage patch
- guard-of-terra 13y agoPerhaps we should employ harvester vessels that collect that garbage, make something useful out of it?
- Crito 13y agoI suspect that the amount of sealife that you would kill while attempting to finely filter that shear volume of sea water would make doing that worse than doing nothing. Also, that plastic is really the lowest possible grade of plastic that you can imagine. I'd be surprised if it were good for even synthetic mulch in playgrounds.
- renang 13y agoI disagree. The plastic is already killing sealife and will continue to do so as long as the plastic is there. Filter the sea, maybe some creatures dies, but future generations will not be killed by plastic.
- ximeng 13y agoThis article http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/ http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-pl... argues convincingly that filtering is a distraction from reducing the amount of plastic which gets into the gyres which is the only practical way to reduce the amount of plastic.
- ronaldx 13y agoI think this is a simplification which overlooks the parent point. It seems reasonable that the gyres have always collected crap and sealife has avoided it. Now that crap is plastic. But, the gyre already provides the function of avoid-getting-killed-by-plastic, so it's not clear why we should aggressively reduplicate that effort. The garbage patch may offer benefits to the ecosystem which are not immediately obvious. Whereas, filtering is likely to damage the ecosystem in some ways. Human record of tending to the ocean has not been very good and we're not good at predicting consequences. I recommend watching documentary film "The End of the Line" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1176727/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1176727/ before assuming that filtering is a panacea.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoThe idea is not to duplicate gyres, rather supplement those with cleanup. Gyres collect it, we harvest it on the spot.
- citricsquid 13y agoThere's a Vice documentary[1] in which reporters visit the "garbage island". The "garbage island" is not how you imagine it, it's literally an ocean of tiny broken down particles of plastic[2] invisible to the naked eye (when looking at the sea) that are in everything, including the fish. There is no way to remove the plastic through harvesting, the only option would be to filter the sea water which has its own set of problems. [1] http://www.vice.com/en_uk/toxic/toxic-garbage-island-1-of-3 http://www.vice.com/en_uk/toxic/toxic-garbage-island-1-of-3 [2] http://i.imgur.com/zLqSGsX.jpg http://i.imgur.com/zLqSGsX.jpg
- bertil 13y agoI am curious what your take would be on that effort, mentioned in a different thread: The Ocean Cleanup: http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic/ http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic/
- namenotrequired 13y agoFor those who care, please support The Ocean Cleanup: http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic/ http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic/ An impressive undertaking (founded by a 19 year old, no less) that's creating technology to solve this in ~5 years.
- cbg0 13y ago> we are currently only at about halfway our feasibility study From http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic5/ http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic5/
- ximeng 13y agohttp://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/12/16/3911379.htm http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/12/16/391137... After initial criticism from quite a few experienced people Boyan Slat toned down his claims.
- oftenwrong 13y agoThe policy director of 5 Gyres has provided evidence that suggests the existing plan will not work: http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/ http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-pl...
- spodek 13y agoFor those who care, please reduce your plastic use! Please try to pollute less all around.
- sushirain 13y agoAn explanation about environmental impact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch#Photodegradation_of_plastics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch#Pho...): > Unlike organic debris, which biodegrades, the photodegraded plastic disintegrates into ever smaller pieces while remaining a polymer. This process continues down to the molecular level.[26] As the plastic flotsam photodegrades into smaller and smaller pieces, it concentrates in the upper water column. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms that reside near the ocean's surface. In this way, plastic may become concentrated in neuston, thereby entering the food chain.
- mzahir 13y agoThe 5 Gyres Foundation http://5gyres.org http://5gyres.org advocates both cleaning up plastic from the ocean and cutting down the use of it
- vvvv 13y agoWe may be witnessing the genesis of plastic-based lifeforms :P
- alandarev 13y agoAnd the end of everything else.
- washedup 13y agoLife is life. Some of it is good for humans, some of it is bad: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682478/welcome-to-the-plastisphere-the-new-world-of-microbes-living-on-ocean-plastic http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682478/welcome-to-the-plastisphe...
- RankingMember 13y agoSo you're saying we should continue to do whatever we want, dump toxic waste into the ocean, strangle dolphins with our plastic debris because "life, uh, finds a way"?
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- Jetrel 13y agoHaving read Larry Niven's Ringworld, I'm brought to think of an eerie possibility this might create; that is - what if this currently non-biodegradable material becomes biodegradable? What if the colossal supply of this material (which as a hydrocarbon, had bound-potential-energy in it), over what's going to be a colossally long period of time, gives enough interaction surface that somewhere out there, a bacteria evolves that breaks down plastic? I hardly expect this would be the collapse of civilization or anything (as depicted in the book), but it really could have some nasty consequences. Plastic is relied on almost for precisely that reason - the fact that it doesn't decay/rust/collapse over time. That's why we use it for stuff like medical implants, safety gloves, food storage, sanitary containers ... you name it. It could lose its un-decayable and its sanitary property in one go. Kinda like the problem with overuse of antibiotics.
- Blahah 13y agoThere are already many bacteria (and fungi) that can break down plastics. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/bacteria-landfill1.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science...
- ssdfsdf 13y agosounds a bit like the plot from the Andromeda Strain. Although that organism was clearly extraterrestrial in origin.
- washedup 13y agoThe most amazing thing about these garbage patches are the large amounts of bacteria that are feeding off the plastics. http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682478/welcome-to-the-plastisphere-the-new-world-of-microbes-living-on-ocean-plastic http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682478/welcome-to-the-plastisphe... Life, uh, finds a way.
- Filligree 13y agoThat article doesn't say they're feeding off it, just colonizing it. I wonder how long it'll be before you're correct, though.
- washedup 13y agoAh good point. For now the plastic must provide something analogous to breeding grounds or points of community. Little plastic planetoids floating through the watery abyss. Either way, there does exist plastic-eating (or breaking down) bacteria: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.html http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.ht...
- raverbashing 13y agoI guess the UV exposure makes it easier (for bacteria, since UV helps breaking the plastic down)
- grej 13y agoHere's a trailer on a current project to create a film about the impact of the problem on Midway Atoll, in the Pacific Garbage Patch: http://aaronwolf.blogspot.com/2014/02/documentary-trailer-midway-message-from_12.html http://aaronwolf.blogspot.com/2014/02/documentary-trailer-mi... It's heartbreaking.
- zebulom 13y agoIn future generations there will be people who devote their lives to clean up the mess that we made. And it will be good lives too.
- periferral 13y agoIf only we could collect all this and give it to this guy http://www.popsci.com/article/science/garbage-man http://www.popsci.com/article/science/garbage-man
- rsync 13y agoHow does the sediment rain in the ocean affect this ? I would think that if the plastic pollution stopped one day, within a few years most of the plastic would be sequestered at the bottom of the ocean. Even though plastic floats, eventually it gets inside animal bodies which eventually die and rain to the bottom ... yes ? Genuinely curious...
- RutZap 13y agoImagine a small gadget (that would fit under the kitchen counter) that would take your plastic waste and recycle it into a polymer of some sort that can be used as material for 3d printers. Then you can recycle your plastic waste and turn it back into other things. This sort of stuff will make plastic truly valuable (which I think it is) and people will stop littering. Now I don't know much about plastics so I can't say if that's possible or not.. it would be nice if it was :D
- Gravityloss 13y agoIf the human can do the sorting since plastic is already marked with number codes then this could be possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling Easiest is to just collect it and burn it in a central facility though. Simplified, you can burn everything except PVC (number three).