The Ocean Cleanup Successfully Catches Plastic in Great Pacific Garbage Patch
theoceancleanup.com
theoceancleanup.com
They also (IMO) somewhat avoid answering a question about it in the video (at 29m30s, “if you do the math, with enough time and enough systems, you can do it”). Or am I too skeptical about this?
The article is about the latest prototype for a device that accumulates plastic for disposal. The idea behind it is to create U-shaped artificial coastlines that slowly glide through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and accumulate plastic for easier collection and disposal. Their first prototype had some defects, but this iteration seems to be off to a better start, and appears to be successfully capturing plastic.
This isn't a large scale operation (yet). It's a promising prototype. I'm excited to read about it, though!
That it catches plastic IMO isn’t that surprising; main questions are at what rate and how close they are to having a reliable device that they can leave for years at sea.
I have my doubts about that reliability, too. This prototype set sail about 100 days ago (on June 18; https://theoceancleanup.com/milestones/system001/), and now they show what it captured in “a couple of days”. If they had it working for a month, I would think they said it, so we must assume it only worked for about a week so far.
Part of the difference is moving the device to its location, but they don’t give that data, either.
Perhaps not surprisingly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Cleanup#2019 has more info than this press conference:
”In mid-June, after four months of work, the revamped system (001/B)[32] was redeployed.[33] This too failed. In August, the team announced that after trying multiple alternatives, a water-borne parachute attached to slow the boom and expanding the cork line used to hold the screen in place would be tested.[34] In October it became clear that the new system successfully holds plastic, and even microplastics.”
I always detect this really doubting vibe in comments regarding this project, why ?
What is the reason a young man who started this project out of almost pure love and compassion and in my opinion, has been completely transparent about other failures be seen as sneaky ?
What would there be too gain for him ?
I would have expected more for a project that lives from donations from the public. Given the paucity of information on the progress made, why would I donate to this project, and not, for example, to Greenpeace?