I am happy to hear this but I always wonder what they do with it. Drag it out of the ocean and put it in a landfill?
During the week-long journey from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch back to port, the trash gets sorted on the ship, and the nonprofit recycles as much material as possible.
The nonprofit then works with partners worldwide to ensure that the products made with the recycled plastic are not ones that will end up back in oceans or rivers, Tobin said, adding that one of those partnerships is with a Korean car manufacturer that uses the plastics in the construction of electric vehicles.
“We just want to make sure it doesn’t end up back where we found it,” Tobin said.
I think the worldwide partners are just going to smelt it down for that deadly, deadly chromium.
He who smelt it…
Love hearing this and hope we can continue to clean up what we’ve done and eliminate the root causes.
The root cause being a lot of underdeveloped countries just dump into rivers and streams. Which just float out to the oceans. We need world govs. To step in and fix the way they dispose of their trash. This is a good start though.
That’s not true. Most of it is from commercial fishing. Here’s a source, from the group doing this cleanup.
Somebody should remind them not to shit where they eat.
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i don’t think that works.
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if the plastic is still accumulating, how are you helping?
This video was super interesting. Basically some organisms thrive in the garbage patch. https://youtu.be/O7OzRzs_u-8
I’d love to know what percent of the pollution that is. I bet it’s no more than a drop in the bucket.
We have to start somewhere! I find this very encouraging news.
(from Bard, I’m not sure this math is mathing… )
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas, or about 1.6 million square kilometers. If an ocean cleanup crew can clear a space the size of a football field every five seconds, it would take them:
(1.6 million square kilometers) / (1 football field per 5 seconds) * (3,600 seconds per hour) * 24 hours per day = 2,880,000 hours
So, it would take the ocean cleanup crew about 9.5 years to clear the garbage patch if they worked round the clock.
However, this is just a theoretical calculation. In reality, there are many factors that would affect the time it takes to clear the garbage patch, such as the efficiency of the cleanup crew, the amount of plastic in the patch, and the weather conditions. It is also important to note that the garbage patch is not a solid mass, but rather a collection of floating plastic debris. This means that the cleanup crew would need to spend time navigating through the patch and collecting the plastic.
Here’s my math:
Texas = 268,597 mi²
1 square mile = 27,878,400 ft²
1 football field = 57,600 ft²
1 square mile = 484 football fields (27,878,400/57,600)
Texas = 130,000,948 football fields (484*268,597)
Pacific Garbage Patch = 260,001,896 football fields (130,000,948*2)
If one football field can be cleared every 5 seconds, it will take 1,300,009,480 seconds to clear (260,001,896*5) 1,300,009,480 seconds = 15,046.4 days = 41.2 years to clear the garbage patch if one of these contraptions were to work round the clock.
ETA: This math is assuming we stop continuously refilling the garbage patch.
Something something metric system
You want me to redo it in metric football fields?!
Quite a significant change, when 1 km2 is about 140 (real) football fields
It’s probably a small percent of what ends up in the oceans daily.
