The organization plans to have tackled all of them by 2025. Research conducted by the Ocean Cleanup established that 1,000 rivers are responsible for around 80% of river-borne plastic waste in the ocean.
A nylon skirt extending below that guides debris into a retention system that concentrates the plastic for collection. Slat has designed a passive ocean-based cleaning system consisting of a long plastic floating tube, which is approximately the length of a football pitch suspended at the water’s surface. After learning more about the problem, he started working on a passive clean-up solution at university and eventually founded The Ocean Cleanup. The first phase of the project, cleaning the oceans, was thought up by Slat following a holiday in Greece where he saw more plastic than fish while diving. The nonprofit says that with enough fleets of systems deployed in every ocean gyre and with the inflow from rivers reduced, it should be able to clean up 90% of all plastic ocean waste by 2040. They also worked to interrupt the flow of plastic at the river source.
#Ocean cleanup project Patch#
This ambitious, two-pronged project rolled out advanced technological systems at a scale large enough to remove half of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (around 40,000 metric tons) over five years. The Solution to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: The Ocean Cleanup Projectįounded by entrepreneur Boyan Slat in 2013, The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization that has been carrying out what it refers to as “ the largest clean-up in history”. Without action being taken to both remove existing plastic in the sea and interrupt its inflow from rivers, this pollution will continue to have a devastating effect on wildlife, ecosystems, and, eventually, human health. Up to 90% of plastic produced never gets recycled, and because it can take hundreds of years to degrade, researchers think almost every single piece ever manufactured still exists today in some form, somewhere. Other discarded plastic is eaten by animals that often die from starvation because they cannot feed properly. Most of the plastic is “ghost gear,” abandoned fishing nets, and ropes that often strangle or suffocate animals.
The largest of these patches is situated between Hawaii and California and is known as the “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Also referred to as the Pacific Trash Vortex, the gyre spans more than 617,000 square miles, more than twice the size of France. Image Credit: Theodore Trimmer/ What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Most are carried into the oceans from rivers, and, once in the sea, some get captured in currents that carry them to one of five ocean gyres, or “garbage patches.” Millions of tons of plastic make their way into the world’s oceans every year, which are currently polluted with approximately 5 trillion pieces of plastic waste. Article updated on 8 February 2022 by Ben Pilkington
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