impact the project itself will
have?
Boyan: Of course, if you want to
solve a problem you don’t want
to create another problem. There
are two categories of sea life: one
is able to just move away from
the barrier; then there’s of course
planktonic creatures that are not
able to resist the current but they
are swept under the barrier and are
carried away by the current itself.
So bycatch isn’t a concern although
that’s something we will continue
to do research on. Then, there’s
the carbon footprint. Because the
major part of the project is powered
by the ocean and the extraction process is powered primarily by solar
power we calculated they wouldn’t
create any significant emissions.
The only emissions come from the
transport of the plastic back to land
by ship and that’s equal to about
400 cars; so it’s still more worthwhile to remove the several million
kilos of plastic from the oceans.
in length so we would collect the
ones that get eaten. Importantly,
there are much larger plastics that
cause entanglement, especially for
marine mammals as well as being
a cause of economic damage for
ships and tourism.
JK: Part of the way you want to
offset your costs is to sell the
plastics and possibly turn them
into oil, though?
JK: The environment is at the
heart of The Ocean Cleanup;
so how are you addressing the
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