There is plastic in our oceans. Lots of plastic. Literally tons of plastics. 300 tons generated per year.
The birds eat it and die. The fish eat it and die.
There is more and more added every day.
What are we going to do?
We are hopefully going to listen to Boyan Slat. Never heard of him? Understandable.
He is young, very young, but he is wise beyond his years. He has come up with a concept for cleaning the ocean of plastic debris that has been proven out through many feasibility studies.
It is a very complicated task due to ocean conditions, weather, sea life, sheer volume and costs involved. I believe he has the right idea.
I am not going to get all technical and scientific on you but there is a word used throughout his work that we need to understand first.
Photo from National Geographic, click here to see more.
It is gyres that are moving much of the plastics into an area known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is not the only patch but is the biggest.
It was discovered by a racing boat captain named Charles Moore while sailing from Hawaii to California and becoming absolutely surrounded by the plastic debris. Some of it washes up on the beaches but tons of it just floats around decomposing and leaching chemicals into the sea water.
So what can be done about it besides the obvious point of not polluting our waters to begin with?
Become aware and support the brilliant minds that are trying to clean up what is there. Have a look at Boyan Slat’s video that show them in action developing their ideas into something that most certainly can work.
Since the areas are so far out to sea individual countries are not taking responsibility for the clean up. Does that surprise anyone?
How about a video of the young guy nervously giving a TED TALK speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROW9F-c0kIQ… click here….
The thing is the collected plastic will be recycled into other uses paying the costs for the collection and then some.
So what do you think?
Click here to read his responses to his critics… and we know there are always critics.
I have heard of the garbage patch and it saddens me that it exists. I'll go take a look at the video.
ReplyDeleteOff to look at the video. We all need to be aware of the pollution that is destroying our oceans and all waterways. Solutions---yeah, bring them on. It is wonderful to see the younger generation doing this amazing work.
ReplyDeleteJane x
I learned a lot about this patch when the plane(s) went missing and the media showed the search results....and the garbage. Heartbreaking to see all the trash in our oceans....
ReplyDeleteFascinating, now if somebody like Greenpeace would get involved in cleaning up this kind of thing instead of spending their money on protesting development......
ReplyDeleteThanks for this link ... fascinating numbers when he talks about the tons of garbage .. wow !
ReplyDelete