If you’ve spent much time reading about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you might have started wondering why we aren’t out there cleaning it up. Well, barely scratch the surface of that thought and you’ll see why. It’s a massive effort, and would require some massive carbon emissions from fossil fuel-powered boats and equipment to accomplish it. Plus, it’s expensive as all get out. But these issues are being waved aside by scientists who are launching an expedition to see just how possible it is to clean up the floating dump.
Great Pacific garbage Patch:
“Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” or “trash vortex” – essentially a floating expanse of waste and debris in the Pacific Ocean now covering an area twice the size of the continental U.S. Believed to hold almost 100m tons of flotsam, this vast “plastic soup” stretches 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan:
“The “soup” is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.”
From the Times: (Cleaning it up)
Scientists and conservationists on the expedition will begin attempts to retrieve and recycle a monument to throwaway living in the middle of the North Pacific.
“Trying to clean up the Pacific gyre would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went,” [says Moore].
In June the 151ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco to try to prove Mr Moore wrong. Project Kaisei’s flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets.
The expedition is supported by Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, which will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to explore exactly how big and how deep the vortex is, as well as collect as much as 40 tons of junk as a test for the possibility of cleaning up and recycling the spiraling soup of death into fuel for the vessels.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/great_pacific_garbage_patch.php
