Tech – Metro | Gigantic ocean cleanup device takes on the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’

Plastic pollution captured from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Ocean Cleanup Foundation)

An invention designed to tackle plastic pollution in the ocean recorded its first success last week.

The giant floating boom has been deployed in the Pacific Ocean to try and fight the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch'.

The garbage patch, discovered in 1997, is a growing cluster of human waste and pollution three times the size of France. It's one of several patches out in the ocean causing significant harm to marine life as it continues to grow.

But the 600m-long device, created by Dutch scientists, has managed to successfully capture larger pieces of debris and small microplastics for the first time.

'After beginning this journey seven years ago, this first year of testing in the unforgivable environment of the high seas strongly indicates that our vision is attainable and that the beginning of our mission to rid the ocean of plastic garbage, which has accumulated for decades, is within our sights,' said Boyan Slat, the founder of the not-for-profit Ocean Cleanup Foundation that created the device.

Our ocean cleanup system is now finally catching plastic, from one-ton ghost nets to tiny microplastics!

Also, anyone missing a wheel? pic.twitter.com/Oq0rkXO3TH

— Boyan Slat (@BoyanSlat) October 2, 2019

Scientists and engineers installed the floating barrier, called 'System 001', 250 miles off the coast of San Francisco, California, and their hope is to collect five tonnes of plastic debris each month.

'Our team has remained steadfast in its determination to solve immense technical challenges to arrive at this point,' Slat said.

'Though we still have much more work to do, I am eternally grateful for the team's commitment and dedication to the mission and look forward to continuing to the next phase of development.'

The Ocean Cleanup Project is dedicated to stopping plastic pollution in our seas (Ocean Cleanup Foundation)

The boom is able to trap plastic using the current (Ocean Cleanup Foundation)

Every year, about eight million tonnes of plastic waste flows into the oceans from beaches around the world.

Ocean currents pull the trash together into these gigantic islands of floating debris.

According to research from Slat's team of scientists, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about 79,000 tonnes of waste.

Ocean Cleanup workers sift through the collected waste (Ocean Cleanup Foundation)

Much of the waste is old fishing gear and debris from the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan (Ocean Cleanup Foundation)

'Some 92 per cent of plastic in the region is made up of pieces larger than 5mm,' said oceanographer Laurent Lebreton. He added waste larger than this can quickly become toxic and harm wildlife.

The Ocean Cleanup Foundation said: 'During the period where System 001 is the only active cleanup system, we project 50 tons of plastic to be extracted per year.

'The full fleet of systems is projected to extract up to 14,000 tons of plastic per year. We estimate to be able to remove 50 per cent of the plastic circulating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch every five years.'

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