The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller
- Reference: 1658860212
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/26/pacific_garbage_patch/
- Source link:
The Ocean Cleanup has been working on ridding the world of the GPGP since 2013. Its founder and CEO, Boyan Slat, [1]said the company's current cleanup platform, System 002, had collected 101,353kg of plastic since being deployed in August 2021. The cleanups swept a 3,000 square kilometer area of the Pacific, roughly equivalent to the size of Rhode Island or Luxembourg.
Along with 7,173kg of plastic removed using a previous prototype, its total collection has reached 108,526kg, or the dry weight of a space shuttle or two-and-a-half Boeing 737-800s, Slat said. Plastic removed by the group is sent for recycling, as well as used for its own [2]merchandise .
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The GPGP, at least the patch of it located off the western coast of the US and not on the [4]other side of the ocean near Japan, is massive, allegedly occupying [5]1.6 million square kilometers , or around 617,000 square miles.
[6]
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It's not all garbage islands floating amongst the ocean, though: Most of the trash in the GPGP is made of smaller chunks that have broken off of larger objects.
It's still going to take a while
Slat said that a 2018 study performed by The Ocean Cleanup estimated the total accumulated plastic in the GPGP is around 100,000,000kg. "Thus, if we repeat this 100,000 kg haul 1,000 times – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be gone," Slat said.
That's an ambitious target. With System 002 only able to remove about 100,000kg a year it could take the better part of 1,000 years to clear it, if more plastic isn't added over the centuries. To address that, The Ocean Cleanup is pinning its hopes on a newer design, called System 03, which it said will be capable of collecting up to 10 times the garbage.
A rendering showing the size difference between System 002 and System 03
[8]Seen from spaaaaace: Boffins check world's oceans for plastic
[9]Billionaire floats eco dream on sailing soda bottles
[10]Up from the depths, 864 servers inside, covered in slime, it's Natick!
[11]America's 'Team Telecom' backs switch-on of Google and Meta's US-APAC undersea cable
System 03 was announced [12]earlier this month , and operates using the same principle as System 002: A long chain of floating buoys suspended between two boats is dragged slowly through the water, collecting trash and funneling it into a collection area at the rear. A 3-meter deep net wall runs the length of the system and collects plastics floating below the surface.
System 002 is around 800 meters long, and when deployed has a span of about 500-600 meters, The Ocean Cleanup's Operations Manager Glen Kissack [13]said . In contrast, System 03 will be 2.5km long, and when deployed will have a span of roughly 1.8km, [14]said Ocean Cleanup Senior Project Engineer Fedde Poppenk.
The Ocean Cleanup said the entire GPGP could be cleaned with a fleet of System 002s, but it would require more than 50 of them to do so in a reasonable time. System 03, on the other hand, could theoretically clean the entire patch with less time.
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The Ocean Cleanup didn't say how long it would take those 50 or 10 systems to clean the GPGP, and hasn't responded to our emails to learn more about the company's long-term cleanup plans. ®
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[1] https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-from-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/
[2] https://products.theoceancleanup.com/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YuBkCLpe8a9722bdY99uIgAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-pacific-garbage-patch
[5] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-weighs-more-than-43000-cars-and-is-way-bigger-than-previously-thought#:~:text=The%20Great%20Pacific%20Garbage%20Patch%20covers%201.6%20million%20square%20kilometers,small%20particles%20known%20as%20microplastics.
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuBkCLpe8a9722bdY99uIgAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YuBkCLpe8a9722bdY99uIgAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2018/03/21/satellites_looking_for_plastic/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2009/11/25/plastiki_recycled_boat/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/natick_back/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/20/google_meta_cable/
[12] https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/transition-to-system-03-begins/
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31gFN3vP_0g
[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq0YkhXKIKw
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuBkCLpe8a9722bdY99uIgAAAIs&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"Maybe we should consider to reduce the influx of plastic garbage and prevent the problem instead of trying to solve a problem that persists because of our collective stupidity?"
Have you . . . have you met humans? For every person who think this garbage cleanup is valuable and necessary, there's probably another one who thinks it's Communist Greenie hippy crap concocted just to slander the holy name of unfettered capitalism.
Painting the Forth Bridge used to be the never ending task exemplar, now no longer so. Who knows? I'm an ocean half empty kind of person...
Are we not doing this also? There are big pushes in most western countries to reduce or eliminate single use plastics. In many cases, plastic is being replaced by paper or card products.
I applaud them for taking this initiative. I agree that doing this alone is not the answer, but we are getting there. Solving the problem of plastic waste pollution is like turning an enormous oil tanker. The problem is massive and won't be solved quickly.
I agree entirely with cornetman. This is a great start.
There should be a bonus for this work
The garbage might be worth something but it probably is not so there needs to be some kind of financial incentive to haul in the trash rather than relying on (effectively) a charity. Its like other trash -- we, collectively, put it there so we, collectively, need to pay to remove it. Coordination of payment could be through something like the UN (except that based on past history it will spawn another major bureaucracy).
Re: There should be a bonus for this work
The trick is to hand over control of Taiwan to whoever collects the most garbage that year.
That will motivate CN and US to use their prodigious military budgets, and the Taiwanese to use their prodigious energy and ingenuity.
I predict the main problem will be a lack of garbage in a decade or so, but I'm sure CN and US can sort something out to solve that.
Units, Please
"The cleanups swept a 3,000 square kilometer [sic] area of the Pacific, roughly equivalent to the size of Rhode Island or Luxembourg."
Rhode Island? Luxembourg?
3,000 square kilometres is better understood as approximately 144 MilliWales or .098 Belgium. (And one assumes the Luxembourg referenced in the article is the nation rather than the Belgian province.)
Where are the editors?
Where does it all come from?
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/these-10-rivers-carry-95-of-all-plastic-into-the-ocean/
"Thus, if we repeat this 100,000 kg haul 1,000 times – the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be gone,"
At one haul per month (optimistic) this will then take... carry the one... round down... 83 years.
The influx of plastic garbage into the oceans is about 8,000,000 metric tonnes per year. Lets say that, unrealistically little, one ppm ends up in the garbage patch, then, at 12 times 100000 kg/y removal, it will take, hmm, lets see, practically forever.
Maybe we should consider to reduce the influx of plastic garbage and prevent the problem instead of trying to solve a problem that persists because of our collective stupidity?