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Pacific Trash Vortex To Become Habitable Island?
thefickler writes "The Pacific Ocean trash dump is twice the size of Texas, or the size of Spain combined with France. The Pacific Vortex, as it is sometimes called, is made up of four million tons of plastic. Now, there's a proposal to turn this dump into 'Recycled Island.' The Netherlands Architecture Fund has provided the grant money for the project, and the WHIM architecture firm is conducting the research and design of Recycled Island. One of the three major aims of the project is to clean up the floating trash by recycling it on site. Two, the project would create new land for sustainable habitation complete with its own food sources and energy sources. Lastly, Recycled Island is to be a seaworthy island. While at the moment the project is still more or less a pipe dream, it's great that someone is trying to work out what to do with one of humanity's most bizarre environmental slip-ups."
I have heard of this huge mass in the Pacific Ocean for quite some time now. But I never seem to be able to find actual pictures or satellite images of this "Double the size of Texas" island. The only images I ever see are ones that show land mass on the horizon. Which means images that are NOT in the middle of the pacific Ocean. Won't someone help a skeptic out?
Singapore, as a tiny island in the middle of (not-quite) nowhere, was also initially unprofitable. Look where it is now.
The Pirate bay was looking to form a nation not long ago. I think they'd be interested in maintaining a plastic "country", whether or not the real scientists are interested in sticking around. And frankly, at the rate we're contributing to the vortex, they will probably grow over time.
I don't really understand your reasoning. The patch wouldn't be as bad if it were actual plastic things that one could somehow remove. The fact that the plastic has broken down into small particles is worse than what most people seem to imagine; the way it is now, it can enter into the food chain, and there is no reasonable way to remove it. Your logic seems to be "Wikipedia says it's invisible, so it can't be too bad." How does it being invisible make it any better?
So the stories don't make it sound worse than it is; they make it sound better than it actually is!
As a whole yes, but there's a great deal of variety. Here in Seattle we're the only major city in the nation to actually be in compliance to the Kyoto protocol and we've made great strides at reducing the water consumption. We use less water now than we did 20 years ago, even though the population has gone up significantly since then. We also lead the nation in gas mileage.
"... you may have to drag a net for a couple of thousand zig-zagging miles to do it.
Gulf fisherman could be paid to do that instead of not fishing
Right on! Since we can't filter all the garbage out it isn't worth picking up ANY of the garbage at all.
You mean people don't line their wastebaskets with shopping bags? You guys must be made of money. I only buy trash bags for the kitchen or big jobs. Unrecyclable stuff goes in old shopping bags-- reuse! We built up a surplus of these bags recently, so we recycled them. We try to use durable bags for small purchases, but it's simply impractical for grocery shopping. Also, I'm sure that one of these days some rent-a-cop is going to harass me in a store for walking around with my (empty) shopping bags.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.