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Giant Trap Deployed To Catch Plastic Littering the Pacific Ocean Isn't Working (cbsnews.com)
In September, a nonprofit deployed a multimillion-dollar floating structure designed to corral plastic debris littering the Pacific Ocean. But, according to CBS News, the 2,000-foot-long structure hasn't picked up any plastic waste. Slashdot reader pgmrdlm shares the report: A floating device sent to corral a swirling island of trash in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii has not swept up any plastic waste. But the young innovator behind the project said Monday that a fix was in the works. Boyan Slat, 24, who launched the Pacific Ocean cleanup project, said the speed of the solar-powered barrier isn't allowing it to hold on to the plastic it catches. The plastic barrier with a tapered 10-foot-deep screen is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in the patch, while allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it. The garbage patch isn't an island and it's even difficult to see with the naked eye, "60 Minutes" reported in September -- it's a vast soup of floating debris, much of it tiny and below the surface.
Little Lisa Recycling Plant is shutting down
Get some of his engineers on the project... Its right up his alley. :)
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Is floating trash
to complex problems don't work, and in fact common sense solutions are nonsense.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Ohhh i was so hoping it would work :(
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(We're going to sink it)
Ocean Cleanup appears to be HQ'ed in NYC, doesn't have enough financial statements to appear in any charity watch site, and is happily taking people's money. This could be a scam (like those calls your grandma gets about the police ball) built on the plastic straw hype. Seriously, if you feel plastic in the ocean is a problem then please consider donating to reputable organization with a real track record instead.
of an ocean going platform powered by burning plastic in a series of boilers powering turbines, instead of solar. /s
Both the plastic and system are being carried by the current. However, wind and waves propel only the system, as the floater sits just above the water surface, while the plastic is primarily just beneath it. The system thus moves faster than the plastic, allowing the plastic to be captured.
The system consists of a 600-meter-long floater that sits at the surface of the water and a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below. The floater provides buoyancy to the system and prevents plastic from flowing over it, while the skirt stops debris from escaping underneath.
Everybody was so busy jerking each off that no one actually tried to see whether it would work.
It is our plastiapocalypse for centuries.
Something useful to know when assholes want to ban things in the US and Europe: it's not your plastic.
Say no to zealots and totalitarians.
Or maybe they'll fix it. A skimmer isn't exactly rocket science, much less science fiction. Dude tried something to solve a problem, rather than just demanding a new $10 billion from taxpayers to fly around in his private jet lecturing us. I give him credit for trying, and if it's needs some tweaks, that's to be expected.
You're looking in the wrong direction.
...it wouldn't make a difference. 86 million tons of plastic is dumped into the ocean every year. You can't build enough of these to even make a small dent (even if they worked 100% optimally). But some hipster got his kickstarter going and everyone can feed good about themselves while they sip their plastic water bottles.
Some ameteur hype monger with no formal training deployed a device designed to catch plastic debris in an area described as a huge island of floating plastic in the Pacific Ocean and that cost other people millions of dollars is ineffective. Not just ineffective but CAUGHT ZERO PLASTIC. If the people pushing the plastic Pacific pollution agenda has any credibility, they'd have airdropped him onto the biggest "island" of it to make the point. Maybe it's moved, or not where they said, or suddenly disappeared under presure from Asian media, or maybe it just doesn't really exist? I find it hard to believe this mission found not one demonstrative shred of plastic waste if, in fact, the lore is based in any small part on reality.
Clean up small pieces of floating plastic by intentionally setting adrift a large piece of plastic... what could go wrong. Genius.
You ever try to pick up a piece of plastic in the bathtub? It's hard!
The first version of something doesn't work as intended and needs mods. Sounds like every software project I ever worked on.
Giant Trap Deployed To Catch Plastic Littering the Pacific Ocean Is Now Littering the Pacific Ocean
yeesssssss...
I get it that solar is a good idea to be considered for each project. On the other hand, diesel also need to be considered as an option. In this case, it seems like reliable high power-to-weight engines would be the better fit.
And given that, if it worked, this thing would have a massive positive environmental impact, I can't see why the insistence on not using the right tool.
Maybe the plastic whirlpool doesn't actually exist.
That means It's WORKING!!
of course it isn't
it's drifting at the same rate as the plastic bits propelled by the same forces
you fecking ijots
Go well
the only way to beat plastics is the smart people who invented the chemistry have to invent a way to undo the molecular chains to safe components.
Go well
If you research it further you will learn its a family run enterprise build to scam environment grants.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
"Did you try rebooting it?"
Table-ized A.I.
Plastic is recyclable,so let the trillions of fish recover it for is. We can eat them also.
Hope, the very worst thing to base support upon.
"His name was James Damore."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Exactly, the real question to ask is why we expect people to succeed on the first try and don't tolerate mistakes.
Perseverance, especially when things fail, is really the key to innovation.
As Edison said:
"I have not failed 10 000 times, I have successfully found 10 000 ways it will not work."
Next time you turn on the lights, perhaps consider the number of iterations it took to make it work, and then ask the question, can we not give this guy two tries at least before we start complaining?
James Dyson has pretty pretty successful with his cyclonic vacuum. He says he made 5,127 different prototypes before getting it right.
I suspect he's being liberal in his counting for hype purposes, but it's also clear that he didn't nail it on the first try.
Boyan Slat has already explained that this news is incorrect. It's not functioning 100% but still working as intended, some refinements are still needed, nothing that cannot be solved.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I totally commend people willing to clean up the existing mess, but yes, we need to stop the source. On Monday I attended a lunch lecture from Beth Terry, author of Plastic Free. It was part of a series hosted by Oceana (https://oceana.org). Here's a short post I wrote on medium: https://medium.com/@davepander...
for every time something "worked" in the lab, but not in production i'd be retired.
Try Googling it. Doesn't exist. It's tiny amounts of plastic in a huge amount of sea.
... stop dumping plastic into the ocean in the first place and then worry about getting the plastic that's already there out?
If we all decide we want to do this than we can move beyond bullshit feel-good projects and throw another few billion at plastic vacuums or something to fix things.
That sounds more like a plan, doesn't it?
Just saying ...
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I hate the poor with a fiery passion! They are all so worthless!
âThat is why I support all the rich people pushing AGW solutions that always involve very high regressive taxes designed to hurt the poor.
We can help this along by setting up an environment with plenty of sunlight and gentle agitation.
Oh, we already did.
So I did a cursory search on him and his operation.
I didn't find anything about scamming grants.
And yes I know Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it is usually pretty close, and there is not a Controversy section on him.
It appears he has investors, looking for ways to capitalize on recycling, but I don't see anything about scams.
He makes no claims to guarantee this will work but at least he is trying.
What are you doing?
Perhaps you could provide something besides just a baseless claim to scam mod points on slashdot.
is that the recycling places sell the plastic to companies in China and other places but they have no idea what actually happens to the plastic once they sell it. The * HOPE * is that it is dispose of it properly but the reality is that in many (most?) cases the plastic is simply dumped in the ocean.
Unlike metal and paper, there is no economical way to recycle plastic. About all you can really do with it is burn it. And we have rules against that. So the recycling companies, out to make a profit just like every other business, simply ship it to the Chinese. It is the cheapest way for them to get rid of the stuff. And with no oversight in place to monitor what happens to it they can just say "Hey, not my problem".
Step 1 - stop using plastics in the first place
Step 2 - get some actual oversight over where the shit goes until Step 1 is in place
Did he get one of those "14 year old invents fanciful way to save world, recieves media attention and grants from corporations wanting to improve their image, fanciful way to save world ends up being not so novel, and actually totally ridiculous" articles several years ago?
If Edison is so smart, why is he dead?
The Dyson company agrees. They say their vacuums suck.
When its at a certain weight, bag it, gps it, let it go, save energy. Others collect
Teenager "invents" device to solve complex engineering problem. Project fails. Gee, didn't see that coming.
At least he picked his sack up and tried something instead of moaning on the internet like 90% of you lot. He saw a problem, tried to solve it. Has not worked out ideally, surely will try again. Get a grip and get off your a$$ and do something to help.
Isn't 99% of the volume of the completely misnamed "Pacific Garbage Patch" dissolved plastics that are invisible to the human eye?
Why is this modded "Informative"? There is no information here.
If this is a scam, then it's got to be among the most elaborate ever devised. I've been following these guys for a few years now, and they've been very transparent about every step. There are hours of videos available, and they do live streams documenting what they are doing. This is a far cry from a bunch of scammers making cold calls from New Delhi, if that's what you had in mind.
They are well aware of the enormity of the task, and aren't promising miracles. Their website (https://www.theoceancleanup.com ) notes that:
"Cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch using conventional methods - vessels and nets - would take thousands of years and tens of billions of dollars to complete. Our passive systems are estimated to remove half the Great Pacific Garbage patch in just five years, and at a fraction of the cost."
Take the time to explore their website. There are plenty of photos, videos, and other information.
Sure, it sounds far-fetched, but they are sincere, and they are trying.
Why is this modded "informative"?
It appears to simply be your opinion as there is nothing verifiable. So I tried to research it myself and the ONLY thing I could find was someone with an axe to grind on Quora, which isn't very information but at least he points out that some of his claims are unproven and perhaps over the top. He either can't make up his mind if Slat has scammed $33 million or $40 million in donations or he's been grinding his axe long enough that Slat raised $7 million in between a couple of his posts.
I found 3 posts from him that more or less made the same argument and then looked at his other posts.
He appears to believe ALL recycling is scam and as a self-described "Aussie, retired Poultry Consultant/Adviser, former pilot" I'm not sure what his qualifications for judging are.
If you've got something to show it as a scam and simply not an overly optimistic idea that isn't currently working please post it.
less problems...
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