When we started our Environmental Economics course, we had a seminar over waste management. The person who was conducting this seminar mentioned about a young guy from Holland who is trying to clean up the ocean. Soon after that this young guy named Boyan Slat was in the new for generating over 2 million dollars in crowd funding. It was because of his one Tedtalk shows, where he presented this idea.
2 million dollars, not a bad start for a start up company right?!
However, it is because of this brilliant idea that everyone is talking about it. On my flight to Sweden, on a magazine, entire two pages was given towards Boyan Slat’s project and his interview.
8 million tonnes of plastic dumped in Ocean every year. 8 million tonnes? I am speechless. I am not being emotional and all but we need more people like Boyan Slat. At the age 19 he can do this, why cant we?
His plan is to place enormous floating barriers in rotating tidal locations around the globe (called gyres), and let the plastic waste naturally flow into capture. These barriers aren’t nets—sea life gets tangled in those. They’re big, V-shaped buffers anchored by floating booms.
Slat’s nonprofit, the Ocean Cleanup, says the current will flow underneath those booms, where animals will be carried through safely. The buoyant plastic is funneled above and concentrates at the water’s surface along the barriers for easy gathering and disposal.
Last month, it was announced that this ocean-cleaning system—which the company says is the world’s first—will be deployed in 2016. They’re planning to station it near the Japanese island of Tsushima, situated in between Japan’s Nagasaki prefecture and South Korea. The detritus-catching apparatus will be 6,500 feet wide and is being called the longest floating structure ever placed in the ocean.
I really hope it works. Apart from this if we can educate people to recycle properly. In fact, wait, I rather say if people can learn to recycle then I believe we might have a solution which will effect positively to everyone.
Really looking forward how this project shapes up!
