USA TODAY International Edition
OCEAN CLEANUP PROJECT SET TO STEAM OUT TO SEA
Removing plastic from Pacific – foolhardy, brilliant or both?
SAN FRANCISCO – On Sept. 8, an ungainly, 2,000-foot-long contraption will steam under the Golden Gate Bridge in what’s either a brilliant quest or a fool’s errand.
Dubbed the Ocean Cleanup Project, this giant sea sieve consists of pipes that float at the surface of the water with netting below, corralling trash in the center of a U-shaped design.
The purpose of this gizmo is as laudable as it is head-scratching: to collect millions of tons of garbage from what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which can harm and even kill whales, dolphins, seals, fish and turtles that consume it or become entangled in it, according to researchers at Britain’s University of Plymouth.
The project is the expensive, untried brainchild of a 23-year-old Dutch college dropout named Boyan Slat, who was so disgusted by the plastic waste he encountered diving off Greece as a teen that he has devoted his life to cleaning up the mess.
The Dutch nonprofit gathered support from several foundations and philanthropists, including billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff. In 2017, the Ocean Cleanup Project received $5.9 million in donations and reported reserves from donations in previous years of $17 million.
How it works
The Ocean Cleanup Project’s passive system involves a floating series of connected pipes the length of five football fields that float at the surface of the ocean. Each closed pipe is 4 feet in diameter. Below these hang a 9-foot net skirt.
The system moves more slowly than the water, allowing the currents and waves to push trash into its center to collect it.
The system is fitted with solar-powered lights and anticollision systems to keep any stray ships from running into it, along with cameras, sensors and satellites that allow it to communicate with its creators.
Periodically a garbage ship will be sent out to scoop up the collected trash and transport it to shore, where it will be recycled.
Marine biologists who study the problem say at this point things are so bad that it’s worth a shot.
“I applaud the efforts to remove plastics – clearly any piece of debris cleared from the ocean is helpful,” said Rolf Halden, a professor of environmental health engineering at Arizona State University.
But he added a caveat, namely that there’s not much point to cleaning up the mess unless we also stop the tons of plastic entering the oceans each day.
And that gets at the heart of some of the criticism.
Stopping plastics from making their way into the oceans “should be the focus of 95 percent of our current effort, with the remaining 5 percent on clean up,” said Richard Thompson, who heads the International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.
Another concern is that the project targets only plastic pollution floating at the top of the ocean, although researchers have found microplastics from the waves all the way down to the sea floor.
There’s also the possibility that the contraption might break up in storms and simply make more plastic trash.
“The ocean is strong and powerful and likes to rip things up,” said Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress, who together with physical oceanographer Kim Martini has been publishing critiques of the project.
The foundation – which openly refers to itself as a “moon shot project” – responds that cleanups are an important part of the story.
“The current plastic pollution will not go away by itself,” spokesman Rick van Holst Pellekaan told USA TODAY in an email.
To deal with the baseline problem, he said the project is considering spinoff systems for coastal areas and rivers that would intercept plastic before it reaches the ocean.
There’s a lot to be stopped. As much as 9.5 million tons of trash is deposited into the ocean each year, according to a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.