If you close your eyes and squint a bit, you could pretend this 600-metre-long tube is some kind of giant ocean snake. It's not, though. It's a device with a very special mission – to catch the ocean's rubbish, or at least some of it.
It's being towed out to a part of the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Garbage Patch. The water currents here happen to make lots of plastic rubbish drift together, and I mean lots – an area almost the size of Queensland.
Until now, it's been too difficult, too big, and too expensive to do much about it. That was until this guy came along, Boyan Slat. This snake thing was his idea, and it all started when he was still at school.
'I realised, back in high school, there might be an alternative.'
For a school project, he designed a system of floating barriers that would be up to 100 kilometres long. They'd sit in the path of ocean currents, in a V-shape, to capture and funnel any floating plastic. Then these giant towers would suck it all up.
'Instead of going after the plastics, you could simply wait for the plastic to come to you.'
We've spent a lot of time telling you about plastic pollution on BTN.
'Yup, a recent study found that Aussies discard more than 9 billion pieces of plastic every year. Unlike paper or cardboard, plastic takes a really, really long time to break down.'
'I've come to realise that our precious marine life are getting killed by the so-called innocent plastic bag.'
But finding solutions hasn't been easy, and with so much plastic already in our oceans killing our marine life, Boyan and his organisation, Ocean Cleanup, are hopeful they can tackle the problem, one giant snake at a time.
'I mean, this is pretty incredible. I mean, something that we've been working towards for five years. And just having it seen from the early conceptual sketches to, you know, now the first unit actually going through the Golden Gate and heading to the Garbage Patch is pretty incredible.'
It's aiming to trap some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling around here, while still letting marine life safely swim beneath it. It's fitted with solar-powered lights, cameras, sensors and satellite antennas, and the design will make it easy for boats to fish out the collected plastic every few months and transport it to dry land where it will be recycled.
Boyan is now 24, and despite the years of work that have gone into this, he says the system will still get some more tweaks in the coming months.
The hope is to take it even further, by letting 60 of these giant snakes loose on the Pacific Ocean by 2020.
That's a lot of hungry snakes who surely won't be going hungry. But hopefully they do, at some point.
Comments
We can do thousands of things to stop plastic pollution. Some of the simplest things we can do is stop using plastic bags, use our own thermos so that in this way we do not use single-use packages, have our own recyclable cutlery, do not use straws, and try to separate the plastic from other materials so that in this way it can be put to use.
Diana
The best form to stop plastic pollution is to think more about how we can affect the earth with plastic
pollution, and make the correct choice of putting the trash and things we don't need in the correct place, because
everyone right now can do whatever he or she wants with the trash and throw it away but in the future we are
going to live the consequences of this incorrect actions.
We all in the world need to think always about what we do, one of the first things, the triple R, Reuse, Recycle and Reduce, with that three we can help us and the marine life, because the plastic pollution involves a lot of things, another one is the global warming, that have been produced by mistakes of humans.
There are many things we can do, many of them are in our daily life, for example, we can stop using plastic bags in our shopping we can use reusable bags for our items. Also another option is stop using plastic or PET bottles. They contaminate a lot, they finish in the ocean and contaminating it. And a good solution for that is to use our thermos. Our goal is to reduce all the waste we have in our world, and have a better future.
Bruno: To contribute to our environment and stop the use of plastic that hurts the oceans, animals and the planet in general, we must apply the method of the three r's:
Recycle, reuse and reduce, in addition to trying no longer to buy plastic things that are not reused or to buy alternatives such as duck bone straws because they are biodegradable and thus we take care of the planet to have a better future.
To contribute to the environment and stop plastic pollution, which affects the planet and the oceans so much, we can implement campaigns to collect garbage, plastic, we can also help by changing plastic bags from the supermarket for cloth bags, etc.
Plastic is in our day to day and produces very negative effects on the environment. To give you an idea, a plastic bottle can take about 500 years to decompose. It is evident, therefore, that we must avoid the consumption of plastics if we want to take care of our environment.
-Without utilities plastic water bottles.
-Substitute the plastic straws for the metal ones.
-Avoid disposable products.
-Choose products that are packaged with cardboard or glass.
In our everyday lives we can start buying green products that help to increase the economy of companies that sell recycling friendly products, but we can also start from our own house by just start to use more recycling friendly methods in order to waste less, like reusing our bags from the stores or using natural boilers that boil the water with sun heat.
Well, I think that the first step is at home, a good idea is to search in internet basic things to take care our environment, for example, in this case we can take care about what kind of packaging we buy and if those packaging can be reused or recycle, we need to do it.
Do not use plastic water bottles. We can buy stainless steel bottles that conserve water and are reusable.
Substitute the plastic straws for the metal ones. In this way you can use them several times and you will not pollute.
buy with reusable bags. Do not ask for plastic bags at the supermarket, take our bags from home and use them several times.
Avoid buying products wrapped in plastic. For example, legumes or fruits. You can take reusable cloth bags and transport everything there, this way you will not use single-use plastic bags.
Choose products that are packaged with cardboard or glass. For example, if we buy a drink, choose glass bottles or if we buy dishwasher detergent, choose a cardboard box.
Avoid disposable products. It is essential to avoid the use of single-use plastic plates, cutlery and glasses.
the most easiest way to reduce the pollution are stop using products that are no degradable because they could affect the environment, one example of this are stop using plastic because the plastic is affecting the life in the sea and some species of animals will be extinct I we are not stopping the pollution of the world
What can we do in our everyday lives to stop plastic pollution?
- Do not use plastic water bottles. You can buy stainless steel bottles that conserve water and are reusable.
- Replace plastic straws with metal ones. In this way you can use them several times and you will not pollute.
- Go shopping with reusable bags. Do not ask for plastic bags at the supermarket, take your bags from home and use them several times.
To stop plastic pollution I can reduce the use of plastic bottles also the use of water because the water is so important, also we can reduce the use of the cars because all the gas go to the atmosphere and that could break down the ozone layer, also all the plastic like this mark of ziploc is so bad because many of the persons that use it let the bag in the streets and in all the places that are not the trashcan so if we start to use the 3rs we can have a better place.
Never throw plastic into rivers, never consume unnecessary plastic such as water bottles, grocery bags, straws and containers that we do not need. We can replace them with cloth bags, thermos or glass cups etc. We can also invite people to do the same actions
In my opinion, the best way to stop plastic pollution is to start using less plastic bottles, remove gum from your life, limit food in plastic containers and avoid frozen foods.
We can help by reducing our own plastic waste, reusing the plastic bags of the supermarket , refusing straws in restaurants, picking up trash in your neighborhood, using reusable bottles instead of plastic ones, among other things.
One of the things we can do every day to stop the plastic pollution would be recycling, talk with the people you know about the importance of reusing things that are made of plastic and we could also go and collect the caps and bottles that you find in the parks and on the streets and take them to a recycling center.
To stop plastic pollution we can do several actions in our day to day, one of these actions could be to use other materials that do not pollute or take as long to degenerate as plastic.
Omg, I completely agree with you, we can help by stop using plastic bags in supermarkets and use recyclable bags that we can use without having to throw them away!!
To solve this problem and save our oceans, we need to reduce the use of plastic in our homes, we only have to buy plastic if it is really necesary; also we need to recycle the things that can be recycle and that we don't use.
If we want to stop plastic pollution I think we can start by consuming fewer products that are harmful to the environment like plastic, also we can recycle this kind of product and separate them from the organic ones so they can be processed to be reused.
Try to use less plastic and replace it with biodegradable products and reuse the plastic materials we have such as bottles or bags for make toys or other things to reuse the trash.
The thing we can all do to stop plastic pollution is putting in practice the three R’s, recycle, reuse and reduce, with this we are decreasing the amount of plastic we use so it would be less the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean, so by doing this 3 things we are helping to stop plastic pollution.
We can replace and plastics with glass, cardboard, cloth, ceramics reducing their use by materials that take less time to decompose. Apart from this we can throw things in their place instead of doing it on the ground, streets, and rivers that end up in the sea.
We can collect the garbage that is on the street, we can throw our garbage in the bin, use
biodegradable products to avoid contamination, not use plastic bags because they take at
least more than a year to disintegrate, use cutlery and dishes that can reuse, and continue
with the help of marine animals that are trapped by pollution, among other things.
We can start using other things as a substitute of plastic like instead of drinking water from plastic water bottles we can use thermos, we can start using bags made out of fabric instead of the ones made with plastic etc..
We can reuse bottles of water to drink many times on it instead of throwing it.
Also we need to avoid the plastic burning to reduce the air pollution.
We can recycle the pet bottles and the cans because these materials are collected by companies that recycle and realize new objects.
I can recycle the plastic water bottles, also i will collect the caps of water bottle or juice. I can join the campaign of save the world from plastic pollution, and i could post some information in my SNS or blog that about plastic pollution.
Pollution is an issue that is very controversial because of all the negative impacts it has on "EVERTHING" it is very sad that people even though they know it is harmful for the environment to do certain things they don't care and commit the action. There are a lot of ways in order to limit of levels of pollution but were aren't saved by this measures.
In the actually, the plastic pollution have increase a lot and many of the people don't care about it. The best way to stop plastics pollution is see what we are doing wrong and how it affects the planet. We do many things that we thing that they do not affect like use bags or straws, but it affect a lot.
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