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.

Comments

So now the floating trash catcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Is floating trash

Some Nonprofits are Scams

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

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.

Re:Some Nonprofits are Scams

[hairyfeet]

Or here's a thought...why not just push to go back to bottles and cans? Its not like we didn't have containers in the past and aluminum and glass? Extremely easy to recycle, in fact last I checked less than 1% of aluminum cans actually end up waste, the other 99% are recycled.

I never understood the push for plastic everything, glass don't leak crap into your drinks and aluminum can be recycled an infinite number of times, just makes more sense to use those wherever possible.

Re:He needs to talk to Musk

[ShanghaiBill]

Here are some photos of "rivers of trash" flowing into the ocean.

As long as this continues, it is absurd to send ships thousands of miles out to sea to strain a few microparticles out of the ocean.

The place to stop pollution is at the source.

Re:He needs to talk to Musk

[slack_justyb]

Absolutely this. So many scientist told this kid that trying to filter plastic from the ocean is literally the last item on the to-do list of actual useful things we could do to help this planet. Cutting off new plastics and trash from entering the ocean is as close to the top as you can get here. All that crowd funded money was a complete waste on tech that's not really been tested and could have been used on any one of the multiple ways we know to filter trash from streams. I give the kid credit that he wants to help out, but blessed if he went the completely opposite direction of anything that could be remotely considered within 500 light-years of the definition of useful.

Re:He needs to talk to Musk

[pahles]

Of course that is the place to stop it. Doesn't mean you can't clean up the existing mess.

Re:He needs to talk to Musk

[thegarbz]

Especially since we know that 90% of the plastic in the ocean is deposited there from just 10 rivers.

Except it's not. 90% of the plastic that reaches the ocean FROM RIVERS comes from just 10 rivers. The actual number you're looking for is closer to 25%. We discussed this only yesterday: https://www.scientificamerican...