The Ocean Cleanup: Three years of effort (in vain) to clean the oceans

What is known quite accurate is how much plastic occurs every year.In 2019, according to Plastic Europe data, there were almost 370 million tons of new plastics worldwide.According to the information collected by the University of Oxford, at least 275 million tons end up in the trash every year.Of all of them, an important part is not managed properly and it is estimated that eight million tons end up in the ocean annually.

When it was born in 2013, the initial objective of The Ocean Cleanup was to be fully operational in 2020 and clean 90% of the ocean floating plastic during the next two decades.After several ups and downs later (the first began to work in 2018), the first plastic capture landed in Vancouver at the end of 2019.No mass data were given, but volume.60 large cubic meter loaded with garbage arrived from the Canadian port.

If we take into account that the density of the plastic waste of the cities, compacted and packaged brushes the 800 kilograms per cubic meter, 48 come out of us.000 kilos in three years of work.It is true that we talk about prototypes and tests, but it seems little more than a stand for 8.000 million kilos that end every year at sea.And this is also concluded by the article The Long-Term Legacy of Plastic Mass Production published by Sönke Hohn and the rest of the investigators of the center of Leibniz.

«Maybe it is possible to clean the entire ocean plastic, but it will take us a long time.While in The Ocean Cleanup they collect the garbage, there are many more new plastics reaching the ocean, ”explains Hohn."It's as if we try to clean a water spill but while we pass the script the tap is still open".

For the researcher, who after leaving the academic world now works as a teacher in an institute, the problem of plastics has some causes and that is where we have to act.«We must reduce the amount of plastic that reaches the ocean and it is very difficult, what is said.The only definitive solution is to stop producing it ».

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— Aloha Message Fri Jul 11 13:04:02 +0000 2014

Clean oceans ... within 130 years?

The Ocean Cleanup solution to the problem is apparently simple.Through a U - -shaped floating barrier and driven by a ship at each end, superficial plastics are concentrated in a kind of funnel.From there, once a considerable garbage concentration has been reached, it is collected and compact, ready to take to land and be recycled.Thus, once the system is operational and this kind of oceanic garbage dumps is multiplied, the initiative calculates that 90% of the surface plastic will have collected before 2040.

But, really, analyzing the numbers, how many devices like The Ocean Cleanup would be needed to clean the entire ocean?According to the study of the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research, if today garbage was stopped by the ocean, 200 devices would work tirelessly, without maintenance stops or breakdowns, for 130 years to pick it up.

Moreover, if one takes into account that plastics will continue, and that the amount of garbage that enters the ocean will only begin to descend at the end of this decade (as the study authors estimate), by the year 2150 the200 devices from The Ocean Cleanup would only have collected 5% of floating plastic in the oceans.

«We didn't want to spoil the idea.They clean plastic, it is true, and it is fantastic that a young Dutch has developed this project.But we want the public to be aware that it is not the definitive solution, ”concludes Sönke Hohn.«We cannot trust that only technology solves the problems we have caused, we have to stop causing them.And when we have done it, we can clean ».

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