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Pacific Trash Vortex To Become Habitable Island?

Posted by samzenpus on from the welcome-to-malignancy-island dept.

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."

10 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. Tiny bits... by Microlith · · Score: 5, Informative

    The greatest problem with the gyre is that the plastic in question is untold quadrillions of tiny, sometimes microscopic, bits of plastic that have broken down under UV light and descended somewhere in the water column. You would need to filter several meters deep to filter all the garbage out.

    Of course, bean counters will kill this because it's unprofitable, and everyone else will ignore it because it's so far out to sea.

  2. Hyperbole by Beardydog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The first story I read about the patch made it sound like it was bordering on becoming an island on its own... an area the size of texas made of milk bottles and grocery bags, all rustling against each other in the waves. No other article I've seen has been that bad, but all of them making it sound much worse than it actually is.

    I'm certainly not going to defend a vast region of polluted ocean and poisonous chemicals, but here's what Wikipedia has to say:
    "the patch is not visible from satellite photography since it primarily consists of suspended particulates in the upper water column. Since plastics break down to ever smaller polymers, concentrations of submerged particles are not visible from space, nor do they appear as a continuous debris field. Instead, the patch is defined as an area in which the mass of plastic debris in the upper water column is significantly higher than average."

    Moore's claim of having discovered a large, visible debris field is, however, a mischaracterization of the polluted region overall, since it primarily consists of particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye."
    "A similar patch of floating plastic debris is found in the Atlantic Ocean."

    It really doesnt sound terribly island-able. I'm sure you can scoop up enough solid material to build something, but you may have to drag a net for a couple of thousand zig-zagging miles to do it.

    1. Re:Hyperbole by chammy · · Score: 5, Informative

      The reality of it is a lot worse than most people imagine. Instead of easily manageable, solid chunks of plastic it's in the form of tons of tiny particles. This makes cleanup extremely difficult as well as makes the plastic much more lethal to wildlife. Animals try to eat the colorful bits, mistaking them for natural food sources: http://coastalcare.org/wp-content/images/issues/pollution/plastic/bird-carcass.jpg

    2. Re:Hyperbole by Beardydog · · Score: 5, Informative

      If the particles were chemically neutral, and harmless to see life it wouldn't be a problem at all, but I gather that the creatures in the area are greatly affected. The problem I have with most "Garbage Patch" reporting is more that they feel the need to "sex it up". The serious people of the world are capable of have care for and concern over environmental disasters that are invisible to the naked eye, but stories about the patch always seem directed at the same people who keep trying to pass 5-cent plastic bag taxes. It's become a mythical beast, a chimera whose dread legend is spread in whispers by folks who would probably be comfortable banning cars, but want no part of pebble-bed reactors.

      I think (and I'm trying to clarify my own thoughts here, as well, instead of ranting ad-hominem, as I have been) that a lot of people see the mind's-eye seascape of bags and bottles of consumer and commercial excess, and the horrors of a throwaway culture.

      The reality, as always, is more nuanced. Plastic bags and styrofoam cups a) go a long way toward reducing many other types of waste in our society, and b) will never go away, because they're so damn useful. Instead of railing against the very human behaviors that have created the problem or the very useful products that improved our lives tremendously for the last 60 years, we should probably focus on creating materials that break down more safely after they wind up in the ocean, or focus on our garbage gathering techniques, or hell, a couple thousand extremely expensive machines that sit in the Pacific and try to clean as much water as possible. Even that scenario is more likely than the societal changes that would be required to alleviate the patch.

      End of Lunatic Ravings

    3. Re:Hyperbole by Beardydog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wait, I've got a smidge more raving to do...

      This story also reminds me of the women who recently spent three days walking around in pink shirts to raise awareness of breast cancer. They blocked traffic extremely frequently, often appointing themselves crossing guards in areas that already had lights, giving each other permission to walk in front of cars while people tried to get to and from work.

      I certainly sympathize with them. I know a lot of them have lost friends and family, and they want to do something for the cause... but honestly, we're all aware of breast cancer. All of that pink shirt money, time-off-of-work money, organizational money, etc could have gone toward research. Or it could have just not gotten in my way for three days, and I think we would have all been better off. If one person had been carrying a donation bucket for research, I would have felt a hundred times better about it.

      So they're building an island and making a symbolic effort at cleaning? Fantastic, I never drive through the Pacific ocean on the way to work. But they aren't making a dent in the problem, everyone with a pulse already knows about pollution, and they're misrepresenting the one problem they're even engaging in.

      Actually solving actual problems usually takes a lot of money, a lot of cooperation, and and a lot of work. It isn't showy, and chicks won't think you're hot for doing it. Not everybody involved in it gets to be a manager, or collect a paycheck from their non-profit employer, or be interviewed by the local news while they hold a sign that gives heart disease a severe textual talking-to.

      And I know a lot of people are doing that kind of work somewhere, but the campaigns that make the news are always awareness, or people who want to -feel- like they're fighting the good fight.

  3. Re:Where are the Pictures of Garbage Island? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not visible, even when you're in the middle of it. It's tiny (mostly microscopic) pieces of plastic in the top several metres in higher concentrations than elsewhere. You need special instruments to detect it.

  4. Tiny Bits of Plastic entering the Food Chain by deboli · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most of the flotsam there consists of small particles that are distributed in the first 10m of the water column. What would need to be done is to filter it out and bind it similar to how pebbles are bound with cement to create concrete to create large enough bits that can be combined into an island.

    Eventually we (the world community) will have to clear this patch as the plastics now enter the food chain and threaten to poison us all. Already there are areas in the ocean where plastic is more prevalent than krill and plastic is being ingested by marine animals, accumulating in higher organisms and ultimately in us too.

    Collecting plastic there would be a nice occupation for all those fishermen that have been made redundant due to overfishing and the necessities to conserve fish stocks. Get them to fish plastic instead and pay them for the trash catch they return.

    Two articles on that matter, a bit lengthy but worth your time:
    http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/270
    http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm

  5. Re:Something is missing here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hundreds of years ago it seemed like lunacy to dry out land with big fans, but the Dutch figured out a way to do this. Only a pessimist can say in this preliminary stage that they'll definitely fail in this scheme.

    And if pessimists were the drivers of technology, we'd still be living in caves and calling science magic.

  6. Re:Something is missing here by Vectormatic · · Score: 5, Informative

    Small correction, we dried it out with pumps, powered by windmills

    But yeah, half the country is below sea-level, if you have any sort of land/see issue, we are the guys to see.

    --
    People, what a bunch of bastards
  7. Re:Something is missing here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a see issue, but my optometrist isn't Dutch.