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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.
Or maybe you could consider the benefit of removing shitloads of crap from the ocean.
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
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?
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.
The current plan is to track the discarded floatilla of Windows phones along their migratory path toward plastic island
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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