Vacs from the Sea

Aye, but a lot of this plastic is broken down into very small bits. Not to mention there are things floating around that should stay in the ocean. Not as easy as harvesting wheat.

matt

 

I understand the challenges, If only we could create a polymer that chemically attracts plastic.

To bad plastic isn't magnetic.

 

Or to keep it from getting there in the first place...

 

If you can get over the hipster-ness of it all, this is really worth a watch:

http://www.vbs.tv/watch/toxic/toxic-garbage-island-1-of-3



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Good news: Quite a few states have mandatory recycling with fines if you don't recycle properly (by ratio of recyclables to non recyclables in both garbage and recycling bundles).

Bad news: Quite a few states refuse to pay for a recycling program at all, citing budgetary and efficacy concerns. (New Hampshire, I'm looking at you!)

 

A charged strip of cellulose acetate attracts plastic that is sufficiently charged.

However the water would prevent the attraction from occurring, back to the drawing board.

 

Heh, the real beauty of plastic is that it's cheap and seriously nonreactive to nearly anything. Finding a way to make it attract to something is going to be nigh impossible.

 

that my friend is the obstacle to overcome.

although I suppose we could just try to prevent more from being added, then use extremely fine strainers to remove as much as we can(obviously we can't get the smallest pieces), and just take the hit on what ever fauna and flora is killed in the process.

 

I'm a proponent of prevention over cleanup, in case you couldn't tell haha. Mandatory, legitimately enforced recycling (we can pay off our garbage guys to take our recycling too) worldwide would drastically reduce the amount of plastic entering the ocean (the pacific in particular) to begin with. It's really much cheaper to have an effective recycling program than deal with the effects of huge quantities of plastic in the ocean.

I also don't believe every problem can be overcome with sufficient engineering, as many scientific types believe. There's a point at which things become personal responsibility, and this is one of them.