Clean the plastic from the sea - take 2

A facility to clean up the plastic island in the Pacific collided with reality and returned to the allotment of garage improvements. Now the optimistic initiative is going for a second attempt, despite the problems and criticism

Ran Ben Michael, Angle - Science and Environment News Agency

In the summer of 2018, an innovative facility was placed in the Pacific Ocean that was designed to be an initial, large-scale solution to reducing the amount of marine plastic waste floating in the center of the large plastic island in the North Pacific Ocean. The event was supposed to be the first milestone in a long and winding journey to reduce the problem of plastic pollution in the oceans. Despite the ambition to clean 90 percent of marine plastic by 2040 through 60 such facilities, the first facility ran into significant difficulties in a short time. Now, the team behind it is going out to sea for another attempt with quite a bit of criticism of the project in the background.

water holder

Behind this ambitious venture stands Bojan Salat, a young Dutch man, who founded it to promote the implementation of the solution he devised, already during his university studies. The project - The Ocean Cleanup Initiative - was established in 2013 and in those days was ahead of its time, and therefore caused quite a bit of media excitement. On September 8, 2018, when plastic had already become the most talked about environmental issue, the facility was launched - which was nicknamed "Wilson".

In Wilson's crosshairs is the plastic island in the North Pacific Ocean, between California and Hawaii, which is the largest of five concentrations of marine plastic created by the constant currents in the oceans. This plastic island has 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that weigh about 80 thousand tons. These figures represent only a small part of all the plastic floating in the oceans (according to scientists' estimates, it is more than 5 trillion particles, weighing about 250,000 tons) and do not include the plastic that accumulates on the seabed.

Wilson is a long, hollow U-shaped pipe designed to capture about 5 tons of plastic every month, without harming marine creatures and while withstanding the pressures of currents, waves and winds. However, after four months of operation it became clear that he was not really able to fulfill his tasks: the plastic was not collected properly and the device broke under the pressure at the end of December. In early 2019 Wilson was towed back to shore for repairs.

The new facility that was sent this month to replace Wilson is smaller and wider, this is so that it can better withstand the pressures, and includes solar panels, sensors and antennas to track the movement of the plastic itself and also to communicate the location of the facility to the ships that will collect the plastic and recycle it.

Cleaning or prevention?

Despite the inspiration, the awareness and the drift of the investors, the project also raised concerns about its method, its applicability, its efficiency and the potential for return on investment.

With the publication of the project's applicability test report in 2014, experts raised technical reservations - about the facility's durability - and ecological ones: for example, that floating organisms cannot bypass the facility or that its shape will trap other creatures inside it and force them to consume plastic. Another problem is that, like any other marine facility, the garbage collection facility will also accumulate a layer of biofouling (bacteria, algae, as well as oysters, crabs, sponges, oysters, etc.) and it will be necessary to prevent or slow down its formation in order to maintain the proper functioning of the facility (periodic treatment will be required to to maintain its hydrodynamic properties).

It is also claimed that this facility is designed to deal with the floating plastic in the upper layer of water, but the estimates are that only about one percent of the plastic waste remains in this state, because most of the plastic waste sinks to the bottom, and some of the plastic that floats breaks down into small pieces of micro-plastic ranging in size from a centimeter to the thousandths of a millimeter, in which the facility is not adapted to treat.

Other criticisms against Wilson dealt with its necessity. The environmental organization 5Gyres, which focuses on the issue of plastic islands, for example, claims that it is better to invest efforts in preventing pollution on land rather than collecting plastic in the sea. Another critic claimed that the plastic islands are actually "deserts" in the center of the oceans (in terms of biological protection in these areas of the open sea) and investing in their cleaning will not save the marine food web at all; Without treating the source of the pollution on land, the islands will regenerate within 50 years, even if they are completely cleaned. Some critics even called the project "a tempting dream, which rejects the application of practical solutions".

"A facility in the depths of the sea requires a lot of maintenance - it's a dynamic, unpredictable and aggressive environment - which involves financial cost and greenhouse gas emissions," says "Dr. Shamrit Perkol-Finkel, co-founder of the Aconcrete company that develops solutions for coastal and marine infrastructures. "On the other hand, investing in innovation is necessary because seemingly impossible initiatives advance us."

"If a venture does not have a clear financial horizon, it will be abandoned depending on philanthropy, even impact investments will expect to see a return over time," adds Perkol-Finkel. "In the end, preventing the pollution at the source, because of the rate of occurrence, is probably the right place to invest in, cleaning the sea has too many limitations."

By 2018, about 30 million dollars had been invested in the project from foundations, companies, crowdfunding and philanthropists such as Marc Benioff and Peter Thiel, the founders of Salesforce and PayPal, respectively. But today plastic recycling is less economically attractive; The large amount of plastic that will be collected (if and when), there is no one to sell. Apparently, the first failure is proof that the investment is in the wrong solution, but some suggest focusing on the positive side of the matter and not giving up too early.

Simple technology

The truth is that today there are technological alternatives to the plastic problem, which are seen as less flashy and sexy, but can work better on a point-by-point basis.

an organization named Ocean Voyages Institute, for example, uses GPS devices, which are delivered to commercial ships and yachts, to mark the location of ghost nets - forgotten fishing equipment that is one of the most serious plastic problems and causes the death of Hundreds of thousands of sea creatures. Indeed, during the 25 days of the journey conducted by the organization in May 2019, 40 tons of marine plastic waste were collected.

The Seabin Project They developed a floating garbage can with a pump and filters that cleans the water from waste, microplastics and even oil. The relatively small facility is suitable for places such as harbors and marinas where currents and waves do not interfere with its operation. A similar solution is The trash shark, a sort of floating filter that filters the water passively, similar to the mouths of sharks hunting for food. The three wheelers Placed in the Baltimore area in the USA, they also collect plastic waste using a wheel driven by river currents and solar panels; the waste transferred to the barge and from there it is sent to the fire to produce electricity.

It's not going to end

Salat and the project continue their efforts despite the criticism and believe they have answers to most of it. One thing seems clear, they alone will not be enough: almost 350 million tons of plastic were produced in the world in 2017 and petrochemical companies are now investing close to 40 billion dollars in plastic manufacturing plants in the US alone.

It seems that alongside the development of technologies that will take care of the damage, international policy measures should be included such as the agreement of the countries of the United Nations in 2018 to reduce the use of plastic, or the European Union's decision to ban until 2021 the sale of 10 types of single-use plastic products for which biodegradable substitutes exist.