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Sea Chair Project Harvests Plastic From the Oceans To Create Furniture
cylonlover writes "You may have heard about the huge floating islands of garbage swirling around in the middle of the Earth's oceans. Much of that waterlogged rubbish is made up of plastic and, like Electrolux with its concept vacuum cleaners, U.K.-based Studio Swine and Kieren Jones are looking to put that waste to good use. As part of an ambitious project, they've come up with a system to collect plastic debris and convert it into furniture. Rather than collecting plastic that washes ashore or is snagged as by-catch in fishing nets, the team hopes to one day go where the trash is, collect and convert it to something useful while still at sea. Sea Chair envisions adapting fishing boats into floating chair factories that trawl for plastic and put it into production on-board."
But how much will it cost to harvest the plastic from the ocean rather than creating it from scratch, whether it be from oil or other sources? (I seem to remember that PET can now be produced from corn by-products, not just oil.) I'm tipping that the balance of cost will not be in favour of this idea for a considerable time, no matter how necessary cleaning up our act may be.
There may be a market for selling these to people who have an environmental conscience, but I would be surprised - albeit very pleased - if it were big enough to sustain a company.
In 20 years, we'll be looking for dolphin-safe plastic items, and lamenting the number of seabirds that're killed as by-catch from the oceanic plastics harvesting industry. Concern will be raised about the waste disposal practices of on-board plastics recycling, but nobody will do anything about it because it happens in international waters.
Sometimes you just can't win.
There is an online documentary on the 'floating garbage islands' somewhere. Not really islands. Just lots of little itty bits of plastic spread over a huuuuge area.
Since the plastic debris is spread thinly over a large large area, you'd need to blow through a fair bit of fuel to collect sufficient amounts of plastic to make a chair.
Doable? yes.
Economical? No.
Unless you could do this with a sailing boat, or a solar powered boat...and from the article...that boat doesn't look like either.
Seems like turning diesel spent on this "fishing" into chairs would be both more economical and environmentally friendly. I suspect the real reason to fish plastic is to enjoy sailing in warm waters on someone else's dime.
Land lubbers needed too: Kamilo Beach?
It does seem like a fantastic, if not long overdue idea. Count me in if volunteers are needed.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Doesn't sound very... Comfy!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The same crap that cheap lawn chairs of made of, 1 year exposed to the elements and it crumbles into powder ... why do we need million year plastics to hold beer cans?
Fuel economy issues aside, how do they plan to find these islands of plastic if they're in the middle of the ocean? A quick peak at Google Earth would suggest that the overwhelming majority of ocean is... well.... water, and it clearly isn't practical to meander around an entire ocean looking for something without a clue as to its location.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
After a cargo accident, millions of tiny white plastic pellets have been washing up on the Hong Kong's shores. No authority, no government cares. Civilians voluntarily organize cleaning up activities every weekend and the situation is still catastrophic. Uncountable fishes have their stomachs stuffed with plastic pellets, but Hong Kong Government still insists that those fishes are harmless and safe to eat. Those fishes are dying of staving because they couldn't take any more real food, and the Government only cares about whether it is safe to eat them.
Sadly, environmental disasters effect everyone in the same planet but they would hardly raise mass concern.
In the near future, the Pacific is roamed by a fleet of whaling ships which scoop the plastic in from the front and spit canned, inflatable blue whales from the back.
The plastic is in microscopic pieces.
END OF STORY.
There cannot be any efficient effort to collect what is so sparse you cannot even see it.
...for a couple years.
The Chinese are very efficient and productive people/nation. I wouldn't be surprised if they are already ahead of the game for this 'free' resource. I will be surprised if the Brits are the first to tap it.
If it were possible to make a profitable business of this that would be a very sad state of affairs.
Oh, I dunno. Whales seemed to be able to survive by eating microscopic plankton in clear water...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Sadly, much of the problem is the plastic granules, powder and fragments that UV-degraded plastics (like those lawn chairs) break down into.
Big chunks are a problem, but a huge part of the issue in the great pacific midden is tiny particles and fragments that've been eroded by agitation and broken down by UV until - for many animals - they're indistinguishable from food. They get into little filter feeding critters, they collect in the guts of larger creatures, and they just don't go away.
Becoming too small for us to see and deal with doesn't make that waste go away, it just makes it even harder to deal with.
Fish, and plankton. And sea chairs, and protein from the sea.
Overwhelming, am I not?
Let's say that all the technical problems are overcome and such a ship heads out and starts making plastic furniture. What kind of irony would result from a rogue wave tipping all the cargo back into the sea?
Please post more stories about fanciful ideas artists "hope" to do one day.
Also, post more links to people blogging about the dream they had last night.
Or something maybe someone thought of when they were stoned.
Oh, I dunno. Whales seemed to be able to survive by eating microscopic plankton in clear water...
but not plastic bags...
So much time is spent arguing about global warming that we seem to have totally abandoned the non-global-warming-causing pollution issue. Global warming is certainly disastrous, but turning all the water on earth to a poisonous garbage dumb seems more imminently dangerous.
Due to what??? C'mon, gimme the rest, I hate such cliffhangers.
Where are the PICTURES of these alleged 'islands of plastic', if they are so huge and therefore must be easy to find (via satellite if nothing else)?
Is it too much to expect evidence that these 'islands of plastic' even exist? You would have thought there would be loads of videos on Youtube of them...
This may be slightly off-topic, but hey, this is idle so I'm probably improving the quality of discussion, anyhow...
Why aren't inflatables more popular? A traditional queen size mattress costs at least $200, meanwhile a queen sized air mattress costs $20, or an order of magnitude less expensive. Inflatables aren't perfect, but these days they're quite stable and nearly as comfortable as a regular mattress. What's more, they don't have springs or padding to wear out quickly, as cheaper regular mattresses do.
I've even seen a little $50 love-seat that was inflatable. Considering being able to eliminate the steel frames, springs, cross-beam supports, and all that polyurethane, it should be easy to make them cheaper, and again be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than conventional sofa, chairs, etc.
The benefits of super lightweight, incredibly compact when packed away, and incredibly portable, plus cheap and very little material used, seems like a slam-dunk.
So why don't we see more of this? Whether with recycled sea-plastic, or not. People like to say how incredibly cheap consumers are, yet this seems like an obvious, huge expense saver, that it seems almost nobody takes advantage of. Why not? When did we become furniture snobs?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Don't worry, China will build a city on the island of plastic bags and claim the territory.
....it always comes up when talking about the Pacific Garbage Gyre but its of a heavily polluted landfill/river in India. Its incredibly misleading and leads to ridiculous misconceptions of whats going on in the Pacific.
There are floating chunks of pumice created by undersea volcanoes. Rather than just making chairs with the floating plastic, someone should combine the plastic and pumice to make entire floating islands. Then put some chairs on them. That would be much more valuable than just the chairs, not to mention floating islands are cool.
the number of seabirds that're killed as by-catch from the oceanic plastics harvesting industry.
What by-catch? Once the plastics become too expensive, it will be economical to catch the birds on purpose and slice them open to get to the precious plastics in their stomachs. The ecological plastics manufacturing ships will be ecologically powered by biomass-burning Stirling engines. And the birds' biomass will do just fine.
Ezekiel 23:20
Yeah... I would watch that movie.