Can the oceans be saved?
by digby
The other day I wrote about the overfishing and massive garbage dumping that’s killing our ocean. And the depressing fact that the amount of fuel used to clean them up will apparently be more destructive to the environment than dong nothing.
Well, out of the fertile minds of babes:
A Dutch teenager has invented a device that he claims could clean up some 20 billion tonnes of plastic waste from the world’s oceans.
Boyan Slat, 19, came up with the idea of a series of floating booms and processing platforms designed to collect floating plastic rubbish.
The ‘ocean cleanup’ concept is designed to capture the floating plastic but allow life like fish and plankton to pass through unharmed, while saving the waste materials to be recycled.
The engineering student believes that once operational, his device could dramatically reduce the amount of rubbish in the oceans in just five years time.
Millions of tonnes of plastic debris are littering oceans and have accumulated in areas of high concentration called gyres – which are essentially floating rubbish tips.
While he believes humans must end their reliance on disposable plastic items and manage waste responsibly, his innovation could make a big difference to the cleanliness of oceans in the shorter-term.
He proposes fixing sea water processors to the sea bed, which are also attached to the floating platform so that the water can move through them and generate energy.
His concept also includes using floating booms instead of nets to cover vast areas of water effectively, while no mesh and a very low speed, means there will be ‘virtually no by-catch’ and unfortunate animals getting tangled in nets that are meant to help conserve their habitat. read on …
I know nothing of this sort of technology so perhaps it’s totally ridiculous. But it sure sounds good.
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