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Sea Chair Project Harvests Plastic From the Oceans To Create Furniture

Posted by samzenpus on from the have-a-seat dept.

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."

7 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Great idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Great idea. by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why the fuck do people always link back to slashdot stories instead of the actual articles?

      Maybe, so that people get to see the comments too?

  2. Next environmental issue: plastics fishing bycatch by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. I see a problem... by madmarcel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I see a problem... by dcrisp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In fact the little pieces of plastic are apparently microscopic pieces of plastic suspended in the entire water column over a vast area of ocean.
      The author, from the documentary above, mentioned that he (she?) travelled to the alleged area to see the plastic and then learnt about the lack of visible suspended solids AND the problem with the local sea life drinking the water and filtering the plastic particles into their own systems.

    2. Re:I see a problem... by Grayhand · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It depends on the density. I saw samples being taken that had a shocking amount of plastic not counting larger items. A fairly small small net pulled in what looked like a soup of plastic so I can see this as being practical especially if you can get some of the larger polluting nations to contribute to the clean up. The chairs will sell as a premium green item and you're forgetting the cost of plastic stock which takes a huge amount of oil to produce. FYI the ship could be fueled by the plastic. These machines could produce all the diesel they need from the plastic so the cost is mostly in the initial set up. http://www.blest.co.jp/seihin-english.html Something needs to be done because it's seriously affecting sea life. If all you care about is sushi then it would be worth some investment by the affected countries. A dozen ships could make a real dent in the waste. We created the problem and it's time we took some responsibility for the mess.

  4. Re:Wasted Fuel by multiben · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or maybe you could consider the benefit of removing shitloads of crap from the ocean.