The Ocean’s Trash Crisis, Growing By 8 Million Tons Per Year
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Have you given up on humanity yet? Getting close?
Well don’t give up just yet.
For most people it is clear that something, anything MUST be done to stop ocean pollution and reverse the effects human waste have already created. But for one Dutch engineering student, the goal of ending ocean pollution has become his life’s passion and he believes he’s come up with an answer to our ocean’s overwhelming trash problem.
Boyan Slat began voicing his ideas on how to remove waste from the water in 2012 during a TEDxTalk.
According to OutsideOnline.com:
He proposed building a stationary array with floating barriers that would filter and collect floating plastic using the ocean’s natural currents.
The theory: Use currents to have pollution come to you, rather than chase the garbage around the ocean—a costly and resource-intensive endeavor. But the research wasn’t thorough enough to convince the scientists the ocean array would succeed. They worried that inserting such an intrusive structure would have too many potential unintended consequences, including interfering with wildlife, to undertake the project.”
Three years later, Boyan is back with a 530-page feasibility study, over $2.1million in crowd sourced funding and a plan he claims will reduce the amount of garbage in the ocean by HALF!
If you’re thinking “Only half?”, let us explain what Mr. Slat (and the entire human population) is going up against…
On top of the 5 trillion pieces of plastic debris currently floating in our oceans,
humans dump 8 million tons of trash into the sea each year!
Being able to cut those numbers in half is insane, almost unfathomable.
Some people believe Slat’s plan is simple enough that it may actually work. Here’s the gist of it:
- The V-shaped ocean array will be made of 62 miles of floating barriers that drop, skirt-like, almost ten feet below the surface.
- The array won’t move. Instead, it’ll be anchored to the seabed in various locations where currents converge.
- It will collect plastic and trap the pollution at the surface while allowing marine life and plankton to continue flowing with the current under the barrier.
- Every 45 days, boats will collect the plastic and transport it to shore. There, the plastic can be recycled or converted to oil.
But the experts are still concerned and here’s why:
- There’s no environmental impact statement.
- The device will miss the majority of plastic pollutants.
- The potential effects on ocean life and ecosystems could be disastrous.
- The team hasn’t done enough research.
- Prevention is far more critical than extraction.
Time will only tell if Mr. Slat’s creation will be the savior the ocean needs right now, but one thing is for sure – if we don’t keep trying to improve our ocean’s conditions and stop the cycle of pollution there will be devastating consequences.
Kudos to Boyan Slat for taking the initiative and bringing ocean conservation to the spotlight.
For more information on Slat’s plan and the environmental impacts it would make please visit OutsideOnline.com.
