when the Dutch teenager Boyan Sla t bathed in the sea in Greece for seven years, was surprised to see more plastic than fish.
He was so shocked by the pollution that soon began to campaign for cleaning up the oceans.
The young Dutch man who is obsessed with removing the plastic from the sea for a long time, few people took it seriously. It was nothing more than an irresponsible College, with a crazy idea that surely would never run.
Even those who question the approach of Boyan Slat, applaud their passion. But this Saturday, backed by a great investment and ambitious work of engineering, an enormous plastic collection system will start from San Francisco Bay (USA West) en route to the great Pacific garbage, located between California and Hawaii island .
The worrying speed which is growing the large island of trash in the Pacific that has three times the size of France where is the plastic that you throw into the ocean?
So far, the focus of the campaigns to collect plastic waste has been on the beaches, and has basically consisted of gathering volunteers around the world to pick up bags and bottles from the coasts.
But before anyone had never gone beyond: to try to clear the ocean from the inside.
Warning: The content of external sites and third parties may contain advertising, some experts are skeptical the initiative. And, despite the tests at sea and digital simulations, no one knows whether the experiment will work.
“It’s disgusting and sad”: the spectacular image of a seahorse caught a bud to be saved on the one hand, some think that it could be a distraction from the more pressing problem: stop the dumping of plastic to the sea. On the other hand, they fear that the operation may cause serious damage to marine life.
But Boyan and his team of the Organization nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup are convinced that the huge amount of plastic in the oceans demands immediate action.
What are they to do?
Its objective is the Eastern Pacific, in particular the large island of trash in the Pacific, where the circular currents have concentrated a lot of plastic in a single wide area.
“We feel that we have a great hurry,” said Lonneke Holierhoek, Director of operations of the project. The plan is to reduce by half the amount of pollution in this area every five years, so 2040 almost all this waste be gone.
“We feel that we have a great hurry,” says Lonneke Holierhoek, Director of operations of the project.
I find with Holierhoek at the headquarters of the project, in Rotterdam (South Holland), in offices that are much larger than I expected.
The Dutch Government is one of its main sponsors, along with some companies and wealthy investors.
The project with a budget of at least $20 million has gone from being the simple vision of a teenager at a reputable international company.
The most polluted place in the world is a remote island and uninhabited South Pacific 5 graphics to understand why plastic is a threat to our planet in the offices there is a slight smell of algae and debris.
On top of the desk and the floor are seen boxes filled with fragments of plastic, which were brought from the sea in previous expeditions, and which are a reminder of the task that is ahead.
“If you do not do this”, it tells me Holierhoek, “all this plastic will begin to break down into ever smaller pieces. And how much smaller parts, more harmful they will be and it will be more difficult to remove them from the marine environment”.
Holierhoek is an engineer who has spent the last two decades of his life working on projects far from the coasts. It is not an activist, but someone with extensive experience working with huge structures at sea.
For her, this project is a determined effort to reverse the tide of pollution. “Rather than talk about the problem or protest against it, is solve it.”
How will the project work?
The key point of this project is that its collection system is passive: there are no engines or machines. Instead, his plan is to move to gently collect any plastic on their way.
The machine is shaped like a giant snake and is composed of sections of tubes. It is 600 meters long and float “U” shaped giant. Under it, hang a screen of three meters.
The aim is that collection system will guide the plastic to form a dense mass. Fish should be able to swim underneath it and, since the device has smooth surfaces, the hope is damage to any species.
The Dutch Government has helped develop the technology for the project. Cameras on Board of the machine will have the function of monitoring, and approximately every six weeks, a boat will travel to it to collect all the collected plastic and carry it to the Mainland, where it will be recycled.
The project plans to convert all the material recovered in a range of products that are deliberately marketed as “made from plastic marine” and would be sold at a higher price.
What are the disadvantages?
Some experts with whom I have spoken fear that marine life can suffer damage.
Anything that moves in the sea is covered with algae quickly, attracting plankton which in turn attracts small fish and then bigger fish.
In fact, industrial fishing fleets deployed “fish aggregation devices” to the role of decoy.
Lonneke Holierhoek has an answer for these arguments. He says that an independent environmental impact study found that this impact can be minimized, for example, generating a fair noise until the plastic is collected, to thus scare away fish.
Each year, millions of tons of plastic entering the ocean. But Sue Kinsey, the marine conservation society, has inside of those who are not convinced.
Kinsey admires the passion and inspiration behind the project, but says it could be harmful.
“The main problem are the creatures that float passively in the ocean and which can not to depart from the road: once they are in this field, will be trapped without being able to move”, says.
It also ensures that, in terms of cost, it is more effective to clean the beaches and focus on prevent it more plastic from the oceans.
Professor Richard Lampitt, of the National Center for Oceanography of United Kingdom, also applauded the project, but acknowledges that much of plastic that enters the sea sinks relatively quickly, so that effort would not make a great difference.
A planetary crisis: the terrible consequences of the “plague of plastic” in the oceans of the world Lampitt also highlights the carbon footprint building 60 collection devices – as required by the plan, and transport boats on their way and turned on, everything to recover approximately 8,000 tons of plastic per year.
“The cost/benefit ratio is not nothing attractive”, said the professor.
One of the scientists of the project, Laurent Lebreton, said to be convinced that the effort is worthwhile.
To check it it shows me two examples of human waste that have a negative impact on the natural world.
Not everyone is confident that this initiative will be beneficial to the marine fauna. A small piece of white coral has grown around the fibers of an old fishing net, a striking image.
And on the edge of a plastic bottle are unmistakable teeth marks that left a fish bite.
“The fish swallowed the plastic and those same fish end up later in our dish. The plastic has become part of the food chain”, said Laurent.
“There is a solution: first, it is necessary to make sure that the plastic does not enter the natural environment, and then there is to collect everything that we have accumulated since the Decade of 1950 ‘, adds.
They will need three weeks to get the collection system to the large island of garbage, located about 2,000 kilometers from the coast of California.
And this year should be available the first results of how it is performing the first project which tries to clean up the oceans from the inside.
