The oceans have a plastic debris problem, and it’s growing by 8 million tons a year. Three years ago, a Dutch teenager named Boyan Slat found a solution he invented for a high school science fair: a passive ocean trash collection device that would collect ocean plastic without harming marine life.
These days, Slat is eager to put his massive ocean-cleaning idea to the test. A passing grade might lead to the removal of nearly half of the plastic debris floating in the Pacific Ocean. But the process needs to be tested in real-world conditions before it can be launched at full scale—or beat the criticism of scientists who are wondering that it can work.
Slat’s idea doesn’t follow marine cleanup methods. Instead of sending ships out to chase floating garbage, position a stationary, floating, V-shaped buffer in ocean currents so that water moves through it, funneling plastic debris into a container for capture and removal while allowing animals to swim past the net-free device.
To test the concept, Slat and his company, Ocean Cleanup, propose to place a 6,561-foot-long float in the Korea Strait, by spring 2016. If realized, it would be the largest floating structure ever used. If the technology works, Ocean Cleanup hopes to build a 62-mile-long system that would float somewhere between Hawaii and California. This one would be big enough to deal with millions of tons of plastic trash.
When it first conquered the Internet in 2013, Slat’s plan captured hearts around the world for its combination of boldness and simplicity. But the scientific community doubts whether it would work, how effective it would be, and its potential environmental impacts. Slat and the 100-member staff of his company, Ocean Cleanup, answered last year with a 530-page report stating that a 62-mile-long model would remove 42 percent of the plastics in the Pacific Ocean.
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