Photo credit:The Ocean Cleanup
The problem
is huge, costly both economically and
ecologically
and apparently intractable:
millions of tons
of plastic have
entered
the
world’s oceans.
Ocean currents
have moved the
plastics in the
oceans, concentrating
them into five main
gyres – vast, rotating whirlpools of currents that dominate
the oceans.
A third
of the oceanic plastic
is concentrated in the
Great Pacific Garbage
Patch – a floating mass
of chemical sludge and
debris ranging in size
from microscopic particles to huge fishing
nets, trapped in the
North Pacific.
Why
bother cleaning it up?
Well, 44% of seabirds
and 22% of many sea
creatures have been
documented to have
plastic in or around
their bodies. At least
one million seabirds
and one hundred thousand marine mammals
– whales and dolphins
– die each year due
to plastic pollution.
For many species, this
could mean extinction.
Toxic,
carcinogenic
chemicals such as PCBs
and DDTs adsorbed by
the plastic enter the
food chain through fish
but no one yet knows
the full extent of the
human health impact.
Furthermore, the economic cost in beach
21
cleaning, vessel damage, fishing loss etc.
is estimated to be $13
billion a year.
His concept is simple
but revolutionary. Why
think that the only way
to clean up the oceans is
to trawl through it with
ships in the manner of
fishing boats with nets?
It would be inefficient,
time-consuming, polluting and expensive.
Boyan asks: “Why not
stay still and let the
oceans move through
you?”
To this end,
he proposes building