- Sputnik International
World
Get the latest news from around the world, live coverage, off-beat stories, features and analysis.

Nothing But Plastic Trash: Remote Pacific Island Is Totally Covered in Garbage

© Photo : PixabayPlastic bottle
Plastic bottle - Sputnik International
Subscribe
With the world’s oceans overwhelmed by pollution, a Dutch entrepreneur is preparing to launch a system to clean it up.

In this Aug. 13, 2015 photo, a plastic bottle lies among other debris washed ashore on the Indian Ocean beach in Uswetakeiyawa, north of Colombo, Sri Lanka. For years along the Cornish coast of Britain, Atlantic Ocean currents have carried thousands of Lego pieces onto the beaches. In Kenya, cheap flip-flop sandals are churned relentlessly in the Indian Ocean surf, until finally being spit out onto the sand. In Bangladesh, fishermen are haunted by floating corpses that the Bay of Bengal sometimes puts in their path. And now, perhaps, the oceans have revealed something else: parts of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, the jetliner that vanished 17 months ago with 239 people on board. - Sputnik International
Millions in Donations Allow Ocean Cleanup to Tackle Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Boyan Slat has been working on a system to clean up the world’s oceans for six years. Now, his company The Ocean Cleanup thinks that they are prepared to remove half of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” within the next five years.

It is estimated that there are five trillion pieces of plastic littering the world’s oceans.

For example, despite being uninhabited, Henderson Island in the southern Pacific Ocean is littered with the highest known density of plastic debris of any place on the planet. Based on a sampling by scientists, it is estimated that there are more than 17 tons of debris – more than 37 million pieces of plastic – on the island, with 3,570 new pieces washing ashore each day on just one of its beaches alone.

“Efforts to date to cleanse the oceans of plastic have been based on ships crisscrossing the polluted areas and collecting debris as they go. According to simulations, that approach to the problem will take 79,000 years and an undeterminable amount of money,” DW.com reported.

Instead, 22-year-old Slat is planning to use an “Ocean Cleanup Array,” a miles-long boom that will skim the surface of the ocean, relying on wind and waves to bring the debris into the boom. The plastic will then be funneled into collection points, where it is stored until shipment for recycling.

Slat believes that his project will be set to begin collecting plastic in the next year.

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала