British media said that scientists are preparing to launch the world’s first machine to clean up the largest marine plastic garbage dump on Earth.
According to the British “Israeli” website reported on April 22, this youth-original system will be shipped to the “Great Pacific Garbage Belt” this summer. The Great Pacific Garbage Belt is located between Hawaii and California, USA, and contains a total of approximately 1.8 trillion plastics, this will be the first time since the discovery of the garbage belt in 1997 to deal with it.
Experts believe that this kind of machine should be able to collect half of the debris in the garbage belt within 5 years, with a total weight of about 40,000 tons.
Reported that in the past few weeks, they have been busy welding huge pipes together. These pipes will be placed on the surface of the sea to form the main body of the machine and become the largest floating barrier ever built by mankind.
Last month's survey found that the area of the Great Pacific Garbage Belt reached 617,763 square miles (1 square mile or 2.59 square kilometers), more than twice the size of France, and contained at least 79,000 tons of plastic. It was mainly composed of 'ghost fishing gear. ' Composition, including abandoned or lost fishing nets, ropes and other fishing gear components, and these fishing gear are mostly from illegal fishing vessels.
Scientific investigations have shown that ghost fishing tackles cause more than 100,000 head whale deaths every year. Dolphins and seals die. More and more seabirds and other marine life have been found dead. The stomach is full of small pieces of plastic.
According to the Plastics and Marine Foundation, which is based in the United States, more than 8 million tons of plastics are poured into the global ocean each year.
According to reports, as many as 90% of plastic products in the world have never been recycled, and scientists believe that almost every piece of plastic produced is in some form somewhere, most of which goes to landfills or In the environment. Disposable plastic products, such as water bottles and diapers, take 450 years to degrade.
The system used to treat the largest waste belt in the Pacific Ocean was designed by a non-profit technology company called The Ocean Cleanup founded by the Dutch inventor Bojan Slater. He was still a 18-year-old aerospace engineering student.
Slater said: 'What I really hope is that this century's ocean cleanup can be a sign that we use technology to make the world a better place.'
According to reports, this strange cleaning device consists of 40-foot (1 foot approximately 0.3048-meter) long tubes - ironically, these tubes are also plastic and they will be joined together to form a serpentine long Tubes. The air-filled tubes will float in arcs over the surface of the sea. The nylon screen suspended below will form a huge floating pod, capturing plastic waste that collects as the water moves. However, these screens cannot catch plastic. Particles - extremely tiny debris. Fish can swim under the screen and not be caught by them.
The 'Ocean Cleanup' team plans to launch this system from the shoreline of the San Francisco Bay Area in a matter of weeks, begin work between the end of July and continue to expand the work area.
They plan to place 60 giant buoys, each with a span of 1 mile (approximately 1.6 km), and then dispatch ships every 6 to 8 weeks to collect the captured plastic debris.
16-year-old Slater also went diving in Greece while attending school. He first saw the amount of plastic waste that polluted the sea for the first time. He recalled: 'There are more plastic bags there than the fish below.' Two years later, He proposed a solution and dropped back after six months to create a company called Ocean Cleanup.
The report said that the company raised 1.57 million pounds (a pound was about 1.4 US dollars) through crowdfunding activities. The subsequent investment resulted in a total funding of 28.56 million pounds. Now the company has 65 employees, including researchers and engineers.
Slater, 23, said that the first piece of plastic that was sent ashore would be an important milestone.
He said: 'As humans, we created this problem, so I think we also have a responsibility to help solve this problem.'
Slater told reporters on the website of the American company “Fast Company”: “Most plastic waste is still large, which means that if we don’t clear them out in the next few decades, the number of plastic particles may reach 10 times today. To 100 times. '