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Giant Plastic Trap Breaks, Gets Towed Back To Land (npr.org)
The "Ocean Cleanup" project deployed a 2,000-foot floating debris trap in September near a drifting plastic patch in the Pacific Ocean that's twice as big as Texas. It broke.
An anonymous reader quotes NPR: Invented by Boyan Slat when he was just 17, the barrier has so far done some of what it was designed to accomplish. It travels with wind and wave propulsion, like a U-shaped Pac-Man hungry for plastic. It orients itself in the wind and it catches and concentrates plastic, sort of. But as Slat, now 24, recently discovered with the beta tester for his design, plastic occasionally drifts out of its U-shaped funnel. The other issue with the beta tester, called System 001, is that last week, a 60-feet-long end section broke off.
The first issue, Slat said, was likely due to the device's speed. In a September interview with NPR, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow. The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it. "In principle, I think we are relatively close to getting it working," Slat said in an interview Saturday with NPR's Michel Martin. "It's just that sometimes the plastic is also escaping again. Likely what we have to do is we have to speed up the system so that it constantly moves faster than the plastic." For the material failure, Slat said his team will probably try to locally reinforce the system to combat the problem of material fatigue.
Slat's U-shaped plastic trap is now being towed the 800 miles back to Hawaii for repairs.
An anonymous reader quotes NPR: Invented by Boyan Slat when he was just 17, the barrier has so far done some of what it was designed to accomplish. It travels with wind and wave propulsion, like a U-shaped Pac-Man hungry for plastic. It orients itself in the wind and it catches and concentrates plastic, sort of. But as Slat, now 24, recently discovered with the beta tester for his design, plastic occasionally drifts out of its U-shaped funnel. The other issue with the beta tester, called System 001, is that last week, a 60-feet-long end section broke off.
The first issue, Slat said, was likely due to the device's speed. In a September interview with NPR, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow. The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it. "In principle, I think we are relatively close to getting it working," Slat said in an interview Saturday with NPR's Michel Martin. "It's just that sometimes the plastic is also escaping again. Likely what we have to do is we have to speed up the system so that it constantly moves faster than the plastic." For the material failure, Slat said his team will probably try to locally reinforce the system to combat the problem of material fatigue.
Slat's U-shaped plastic trap is now being towed the 800 miles back to Hawaii for repairs.
Any time anyone tries to do something good for the environment there will always be some armchair warrior like you trying to shit on everything. Thankfully nobody needs to take what you say seriously.
Prototypes rarely works perfect the first time. Build it stronger, try again. Normal for untested novel devices.
Also, it doesn't matter if the thing occationally looses a piece of plastic - as long as it catches more than it leaks.
That would require Indians and Asians to actually give a fuck, which clearly they don't.
It's why climate change is inevitable. Any solution which requires cooperation from India and Asian countries is doomed to fail and is simply a waste of effort and money.
Solutions to big problems seldom work perfectly the first 10 attempts.
Lots of examples of these problems around the world.
Trying to do something is a good thing. We learn more from our failures, after all. Hopefully, someone rich will decide it is worth funding the cleanup.
That would require Americans to actually give a fuck, which clearly they don't.
It's why climate change is inevitable. Any solution which requires cooperation from Americans is doomed to fail and is simply a waste of effort and money.
FTFY.
There are also a lot of other entities that could be substituted there. You could probably boil it down to just "any solution which requires cooperation".
Um, most of the plastic there comes from the West who are simply exporting the problem, and some of them do give a fuck, which is precisely why China has now refused to accept any more plastic waste exported to it from the West.
And the US is STILL by far the biggest polluter on the planet, whatever lame efforts it's made so far to change that, so suggesting the problem extends to India and Asian countries too is utter nonsense.
It's pretty clear the West at very least deserves equal blame for the problem.
Mixed plastics are best recycled by being used as fuel. That is a harsh economic fact.
If you can't incinerate for power, then burying is the next best option. 'Throwing into nearest river' isn't in the top ten, neither is 'losing money hand sorting by chemistry so you can mix it with new plastic and make extra brittle new things'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Somebody makes an invention that, in beta form, is flawed. They see a clear path to success so they go about making that happen. Then people come and crap. I remember when conversations on /. were decent, but it's been a while.