Can Floating Rubbish Collectors Clean the Ocean?

Collectively, our oceans are in a dire state. A recent research mission conducted by scientists from Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand and the USA revealed that there are more than 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in our oceans. 5.25 trillion pieces! That’s more than enough to have a significantly detrimental effect on all of the marine dwelling fish and mammals which live there, as well as reaching further up the food chain, as well.

In an attempt to alleviate the plastic strain on our world’s waters, one enterprising young Dutch inventor has come up with an ambitious plan to remove the waste through a floating rubbish collector. Boyan Slat is a 22-year-old university drop-out whose company Ocean Cleanup intends to trial its remote plastic collection scheme in the North Pacific Gyre by the end of the decade.

Fighting an uphill battle

As awareness about the pollution of our oceans increases, scientists are coming up with ever more ingenious ways of ensuring water quality. While low cost water sensors and other technological innovations are doing their bit to prevent contamination of rivers, waterways and oceans from harmful chemicals, they don’t legislate for plastic pollution.

An appallingly paltry 5% of the world’s plastic is recycled at present, meaning an awful lot of it finds its way into our oceans. This can have a devastating effect on the local flora and fauna and cause unsightly destruction of beaches and shorelines.

At the tender age of 16, Slat visited Greece and was shocked to encounter more plastic bags than fish on a diving trip. From that moment, he made it his life’s work to tackle the ever-increasing problem of plastic pollution in our waters.

The Ocean Cleanup

Returning to school after his trip, Slat designed a high school science project which would collect marine garbage and took that idea to the next level two years later, when he packed in his studies and founded The Ocean Cleanup.

Thanks to a significant amount of exposure (2.5 million views!) on TED Talks, The Ocean Cleanup has received $31.5 million, with the lion’s share of that arriving in the last year. They have re-evaluated their original design brief to downscale the size of the collector, switching from only a few 100km-long units to a multitude of 1km-wide machines. This, Slat believes, will allow him to deploy them two years ahead of schedule in 2018 and improve their efficiency.

With trash being funnelled into a central holding tank, and that tank being emptied on a monthly basis, Slat hopes to deploy 50 of the units next year and remove half of the plastic in the North Pacific Gyre within five.

Critics not convinced

However, not everyone shares Slat’s enthusiasm for the project. Critics claim it is inefficient and focuses on the wrong areas for oceanic clean-up, with the Chinese and Indonesian coasts cited as better locations for an operation.

Moreover, others are of the opinion that prevention is better than a cure when it comes to plastic pollution and that Slat’s project ignores the root cause of the problem. Indeed, it’s seen by some as an unwelcome distraction which will only hinder the progress of those working to curb our throwaway culture and direct more of our used plastic to recycling plants.

Despite the criticism, Slat remains unfazed and believes his project is a vital component of the ocean clean-up effort. “We need to do both,” he explains. “We need to intercept plastic before it becomes ocean plastic… and we need to clean up what is out there.”