5 inventions to clean the plastic oceans

“A new habitat has been created, an unprecedented horrible situation in the history of the planet,” says Mike Moore, a researcher at the Marina Algalita Institute, in California, United States. The expert emphasizes the “plastic soups”, in which marine fauna is forced to live, in an environment that also involves risks of drowning and accidents that end the lives of many animals.

Experiments carried out in laboratory indicate as especially dangerous the POLISTNERO, whose degradation is contaminating water with toxic products that come from huge amounts of drifting plastic products. Its dimensions are unknown, because under the surface, that is, in the funds, little explored, there may be an unimaginable amount.

To get an idea, it is estimated that oceanic plastic garbage exceeds 5 billion plastic pieceswhose weight will be around more than 150 million tons, according to figures from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Five Gyres Institute Institute in Los Angeles.

If we do nothing to remove this garbage and stop our rhythm of spills, the situation can definitely leave hands. As a graphic example, also according to the same foundation, Let’s pour a plastic garbage truck every minuteand to continue like this in 2050 we will bend the figure. By then, the oceans could have more plastic than fish, they conclude.

At the public health level, the situation also covers the problem of food security. Not surprisingly, fishing reserves suffer with this ecosystem degradation. But not only that, because fish health is another issue that directly puts.

After all, it is not known if it is better not to have a fish than to eat it polluting. In fact, this excessive pollution is already returning to us as if it were a diabolical Boomerang. Experts warn us that “35 percent of the fish we fish have an average of one or two plastic pieces in their stomachs,” says Mike Moore. That is, the plastic we throw to the sea ends on our dish and, therefore, in our body. A nice panorama.

Thus, Aguzar ingenuity is a real urgency. There are currently no solutions to remove ocean garbage, whose main difficulty is in the small pieces of the ocean. “They are very small, very diverse and very thin. And a global solution is required,” says Erik van Sebile, scientist of the Center of Excellence for Climate Science from Australia.

Since it is an international problem, the solution must also be. Thus, in a voice, the solution that occurs to Sebille is to prevent. That is to say, raise awareness about the importance of recycling and the reduction of its consumption, as well as the invention of non -polluting bioplastics.

And, of course, welcome are proposals such as the ones we explain below. Still incipient solutions, many in prototype phase or even that. Be that as it may, they are attempts that point to the stars, and only because of the utopia that they show well deserve our attention.

The invention of the young Dutchman Boyan Slat aspires to achieve great successes with his revolutionary system, an inventazo that has turned the world thanks to his media force. It is an experimental device that acts as a great funnel that absorbs garbage. Baptized as Ocean Cleanup Array, has been designed to absorb millions of tons of plastic Marino and then Recycle it in situ.

This engineering student is convinced that he can recover plastic garbage from the oceans of the world and will soon be able to prove it. It will do so in a pilot project that works on the Japanese coast, to the south of the country.

The next phase of the Ocean Cleanup project, precisely baptized, “The Next Phase”, was inaugurated in a massive event starring his Alma Mater, the very young and always surprising Boyan Slat.

There is no doubt that project of this young man engineer It’s anything but ghostly. His impetus and the support he has, both at the level of human resources, material and economic, forces him to take it seriously.

However, its objective represents a great challenge that can hardly be considered feasible. Many doubt their effectiveness, although it is demonstrating many things.

The next step, the announced “The Next Phase” to hype and saucer, has left behind the experimental phase to start the great adventure of cleaning the large -scale ocean.

In this case, giving time to time is key to answering this question. In just a few years we will know if we are facing a failed attempt or in front of a historical inventazo that really will be the definitive technical solution to the drama that involves ocean plastic garbage.

As SLAT himself says, instead of waiting for people to stop throwing trash or that plastic is replaced by others materials less pollutantsyou have to bet on giving answers. “We must take advantage that humans are very good to invent technical solutions to our problems. Just, that is what we are doing.” Why not, maybe we are facing one of the heroes of our time?

The next solution is from Sung Jin Cho, a South Korean who bets on a gigantic vacuum cleaner designed to collect garbage from the sea and recycle it. His futuristic invention is called “Seawer” and has underwater skyscraper.

His idea is to place it just where these great concentrations of plastics are found. Although his project is conceptual, for now, the idea has earned him the mention of honor in the prestigious Evolo Skyscraper Competition Design Contest.

Japanese scientists have discovered a bacteria (Ideonella Sakaiensis 201-F6) with a diet that comes to us that neither painted to erase the plastic of the seas. The aforementioned demonstrates good appetite for eat the most common plastic (PET or polyethylene terephthalate), just the one used in disposable water bottles and other products such as clothes, food trays or containers.

The finding has been published in Science, and as detailed could help reduce waste, which in this type of plastic exceed 50 million tons per year in the world every year. Before this discovery, there was evidence that a rare type of fungus could do the same.

According to a recent study, the best way to clean ocean plastics is Place collectors near the coast. In this way, we prevent possible absorption systems such as the pointed ones to damage marine life.

The Ocean Cleanup project plans to implement this proposal by Dr. Erik Van Sebille and Peter Sherman, undergraduate physics student at Imperial College in London. His study, published in the Environmental Research Letters, locates the best points to locate the collectors.

Removing the plastic from the sea can seem like a joke, and in fact this curious garbage can It has not been invented to work on a large scale. However, within its modesty, Seabin can be very effective, a garbage cube that floats and absorbs the waste that is on the surface of the sea. Once inside, they filter and a pump returns the clean water to the sea.

The parents of the creature, Andrew Turton and Peter Ceglinski, -surfists for more signs-, have invented this curious ingenuity within the Seabin Projetc, and the first pilot test will be done at the Real Club Náutico de Palma. Who knows, maybe Cubito A Cubito becomes a small big difference, although again preventing is still the best option. Maybe also the only one at our disposal.

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