He stresses that while clean-up projects capture the public imagination, systemic change is required. “But with a plastic and plastic-packaging market that is continuing to grow exponentially-expected to double in the next 20 years because most of the growth is in emerging countries-ocean leakage is expected to triple in the next 20 years if we don’t change anything.” Sander Defruyt, who leads the New Plastics Economy programme at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, says clean-up technologies have a role to play in tackling waste already present in the environment. A prototype was recently deployed in an Amsterdam canal, with the aim of stopping plastic waste from entering the North Sea.īut not everyone is impressed. Fish as well as ships can pass the barrier. This creates a curtain of bubbles across the water which pushes plastic waste towards containers at the riverside. Another Dutch organisation, The Great Bubble Barrier, is developing a design that pumps air from tubes installed at the bottom of a watercourse. The Ocean Cleanup is not the only organisation looking at a technological solution in rivers. The Ocean Cleanup Interceptor 002 in Klang, Selangor, Malaysia. The organisation’s own research suggests that 80% of ocean waste comes from just 1% of the world's rivers ( see map), and it aims to target these over the next five years. The Ocean Cleanup launched the first version of its river interceptor system in 2017 in Zuidland, in the Dutch province of South Holland, deploying it in Indonesia the following year.
#Ocean cleanup free#
Managing director Chris Worp says: “It’s something we’ve been working from almost from the start, because it’s clear that you need to do both if you want to have oceans that are free of plastic.”
Since 2015 The Ocean Cleanup has been researching the feasibility of river-based plastic collection alongside its ocean system.
#Ocean cleanup trial#
In October, The Ocean Cleanup announced that a trial of a modified design was successfully capturing rubbish from the Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous rotating gyre of waste in the Pacific Ocean. The system was also failing to retain the plastic that it caught. A four-month trial in 2018 ended due to a structural failure in one of the booms. A 2014 assessment of the project’s feasibility suggested that it would be unable to capture smaller, deeper plastic particles that it could harm wildlife and that it would struggle in rough seas.
#Ocean cleanup series#
Then a teenage aerospace-engineering student, he wanted to deploy a series of floating booms in the ocean to capture plastic waste.ĭespite making both headlines and cash-more than US$30m in donations since 2013-the project suffered setbacks and criticism.
The Rotterdam-based non-profit organisation was founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat. Thailand has also signed up to deploy an interceptor near Bangkok, and The Ocean Cleanup is in discussions about another in the US. A third is ready to be installed in Vietnam’s Mekong delta, and a fourth is destined for the Dominican Republic.
Two interceptors are already operational in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Klang, Malaysia. The organisation says its invention can capture 50,000kg of waste per day. A long arm on the surface of the water guides rubbish into the vessel, while an onboard computer monitors the system’s performance and alerts local operators to collect the waste. Its river-based Interceptor 002 system is a solar-powered catamaran anchored to the riverbed. One of the latest such projects was unveiled by The Ocean Cleanup in October. Unlike climate change, the problem is clearly visible and simple to grasp, and it has inspired a raft of innovative ideas for tackling it. Scientific understanding and public awareness of the impacts of plastic waste in the oceans have grown hugely in recent years.
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