ocean plastic

Keeping Trash Out Of The Ocean | Earth Wise

February 23, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization, founded in 2013 by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, to develop and scale technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. It is an organization that proudly declares that its primary aim is to put itself out of business by successfully cleaning up the oceans.

A major activity of The Ocean Cleanup is efforts to clean the ocean garbage patches that have accumulated in several places, best-known of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The effort involves use of large U-shaped floating barriers that act as an artificial coastline to trap garbage which is then funneled into a barge for disposal. Ten full-sized systems will be needed to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

A second activity of The Ocean Cleanup is preventing garbage in rivers from making its way into the oceans. Rivers are the main source of ocean plastic pollution. The Ocean Cleanup has developed river machines called Interceptors that capture garbage for disposal. Last fall, they installed a machine called Interceptor 007 in Ballona Creek, a waterway in the Los Angeles area. In the first rainfall after installation, the Interceptor managed to stop 35,000 pounds of waste from entering the ocean in just a few days.

The original Interceptor models have been deployed in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam. A different type called the Interceptor Trashfence is being tested in Guatemala.

The Ocean Cleanup states that if fleets of its barrier systems are installed in all the garbage patches and Interceptors in the 1000 most significant rivers, 90% of floating ocean plastic can be removed by 2040.

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The Interceptor 007 Stops 35,000 Pounds Of Trash From Entering Ocean

The Ocean Cleanup

Photo, posted February 23, 2015, courtesy of Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

How Much Plastic Is Really In The Ocean? | Earth Wise

February 16, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The world has produced more than 6 billion tons of plastic to date and much of that has become waste that has not been recycled, incinerated, or otherwise properly contained. A great deal of it has ended up in the oceans of the world.

Researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have done an analysis to assess just how much plastic has ended up in the ocean. According to the study, nearly 28 million tons of plastic waste has entered the ocean and nearly two-thirds of that cannot be monitored.

Furthermore, the Kyushu analysis suggests that those 28 million tons are just the tip of the plastic waste iceberg. Their findings are that there may be another 600 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste trapped on land – nearly 10% of all the plastic ever produced.

The study created models that simulate the processes by which plastics find their way into the ocean, get transported, and fragment into pieces. According to their models, large plastics and smaller pieces of microplastics floating on the ocean surface each account for only about 3% of all ocean plastics. Microplastics on beaches account for another 3%, and 23% of ocean plastic waste is larger plastic litter on the world’s shores.

These things account for only about a third of ocean plastic. The rest of it is in locations that are impossible to monitor such as heavy plastics that settle on the seafloor because they are denser than seawater. Half of plastic products made today are made from these heavy plastics.

Plastic pollution is not just a big problem; evidently it is a bigger problem than we thought.

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Visible ocean plastics just the tip of the iceberg

Photo, posted February 28, 2010, courtesy of Kevin Krejci via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Why Do Animals Eat Ocean Plastic?

November 21, 2016 By WAMC WEB

It’s no secret that there is a lot of plastic debris in our oceans. In fact, scientists estimate that there is more than 165 million tons of plastic trash swirling about in our oceans today, with an additional 8.8 million tons flowing in every year. And as the oceans swell with plastic litter, hundreds of marine species are ingesting the stuff – often with dire consequences.