Creativity at its best

[Kulindahr]

Daydreaming in school.

Doodling with a problem.

Dedicated to serving others...


A 19-y.o. has come up with a solution to a situation that has balked efforts by engineers around the world: cleaning up the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch":

Previously the idea of cleaning up the world’s oceans with their vast accumulations of disposed plastic material was considered an impossibility. Now a 19-year-old inventor says he and his foundation has a way to clean up the world’s oceans, and not only does he say we can do it, but that we can do it in five years time and produce a profit from it.

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Wait -- what was that last bit? He could make a profit, but instead....

When he and others realized that the concept would work he took a leap of faith and created a non-profit organization he calls The Ocean Cleanup Foundation. This group will focus on the goal of developing his invention, raise funds for it and make it operational as soon as possible. His concept would save numerous aquatic species of fish and help reduce PCB and DDT containments affecting all of us. Best of all it operates on the power of the sun and by the oceans themselves.

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He wants no profit -- he just wants to clean up the oceans.

Read more.


This is the kind of thing that can change our world: young, brilliant people not pursuing the power of profit, but pursuing a better world.


I wonder of this would make our beaches cleaner, too?
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[JayHawk]

The link didnt work for me.... maybe this one does = Clean up the Oceans

I havent read it so no real opinion except, if true and if it works.... wow? This is such a nasty problem

 

[JayHawk]

The only issue I see with it is the lack of info on HOW it determines matter is a plastic or organic type of matter and then how it separates the two. That is the main issue with the boom concept.


So a gianormous ocean zoomba

 

[Kulindahr]

The only issue I see with it is the lack of info on HOW it determines matter is a plastic or organic type of matter and then how it separates the two. That is the main issue with the boom concept.


So a gianormous ocean zoomba

With the ways they process plastics in recycling now, I doubt organics are a issue. And since that part of the ocean is essentially a desert, I see little worry about too many organisms in the first place.

 

[JayHawk]

With the ways they process plastics in recycling now, I doubt organics are a issue. And since that part of the ocean is essentially a desert, I see little worry about too many organisms in the first place.

Well i specifically mentioned it because he did, so obviously it is a concern. Plus the Pacific Ocean version may be sparsely populated but even 'deserts' have rich and sustained life. Plus EVERY ocean on earth has a gyre of plastic and trash.

 

[xbuzzerx]

The only issue I see with it is the lack of info on HOW it determines matter is a plastic or organic type of matter and then how it separates the two. That is the main issue with the boom concept.


So a gianormous ocean zoomba

Is it roomba? Isn't zoomba a jazzercise program? Or am I switching them up..?

 

[JayHawk]

Your right it is roomba.... lol. But ginormous dancer-cize in the pacific ocean would be truly creative.

 

[xbuzzerx]

Your right it is roomba.... lol. But ginormous dancer-cize in the pacific ocean would be truly creative.

Yeah I just had a surreal moment where I pictured the infomercial of it all taking place on the surface of the Pacific, it was amusing.

 

[Kulindahr]

Well i specifically mentioned it because he did, so obviously it is a concern. Plus the Pacific Ocean version may be sparsely populated but even 'deserts' have rich and sustained life. Plus EVERY ocean on earth has a gyre of plastic and trash.

I'd never gotten the video to work before, so I hadn't head his comment. BTW, he's a terrible speaker.

 

[Kulindahr]

Yeah I just had a surreal moment where I pictured the infomercial of it all taking place on the surface of the Pacific, it was amusing.

Someone else proposed seeding the gyre with wood fiber and then mangrove... to make a giant floating island out of the mess. Then you could do an infomercial on the ocean surface.

 

[DonQuixote]

It would be a great thing, that is for sure.

 

[T-Rexx]

This is a bunch of nonsense.

Building a massive array of floating booms and deploying them across all of the world's oceans in sufficient numbers to suck in all the pollution would be a phenomenal engineering undertaking - perhaps the largest public works project ever accomplished by mankind. It would require unprecedented international cooperation and consume enormous national resources. And no, it could not "make money." Recycling is a very expensive enterprise. Recycling is done to save the planet, not make money.

This is like plans to solve the nuclear waste storage problem by shooting it into the sun.

 

[Kulindahr]

This is a bunch of nonsense.

Building a massive array of floating booms and deploying them across all of the world's oceans in sufficient numbers to suck in all the pollution would be a phenomenal engineering undertaking - perhaps the largest public works project ever accomplished by mankind. It would require unprecedented international cooperation and consume enormous national resources. And no, it could not "make money." Recycling is a very expensive enterprise. Recycling is done to save the planet, not make money.

This is like plans to solve the nuclear waste storage problem by shooting it into the sun.

Remind me-- where did you get an engineering degree?

 

[kallipolis]

This is a bunch of nonsense.

Building a massive array of floating booms and deploying them across all of the world's oceans in sufficient numbers to suck in all the pollution would be a phenomenal engineering undertaking - perhaps the largest public works project ever accomplished by mankind. It would require unprecedented international cooperation and consume enormous national resources. And no, it could not "make money." Recycling is a very expensive enterprise. Recycling is done to save the planet, not make money.

This is like plans to solve the nuclear waste storage problem by shooting it into the sun.

There are other practical considerations such as ships, thousands of them plying their way across the world's oceans reminding me of the stupidity of the captain of the Costa Lines cruise liner running his ship aground off the Italian coast last year just imagine miles of floating booms being regularly damaged by passing ships.

Here in Greece over many years recycling from city trash bins has been the preserve of our various Roma communities but in very recent times with growing austerity our various immigrant communities have been obliged to participate in the recycling business which I am told by my Gypsy lover at one time paid the Gypsy well whereas, ...not now with less, and less metal being dumped, and with an enormous increase in competition from even poorer folk from our immigrant communites.

Local cleaning of the sea bed in ports, and off popular beaches is practicable, and is a fact of life leading me to believe that such a plan can be applied successfully in coastal regions whereas, I have reservations on the feasibility of applying similar remedies in the ocean deeps.

 

[T-Rexx]

Remind me-- where did you get an engineering degree?

I happen to have two post-doctorates in science.

But my education has nothing to do with the impracticality of this plan.

 

[T-Rexx]

There are other practical considerations such as ships, thousands of them plying their way across the world's oceans reminding me of the stupidity of the captain of the Costa Lines cruise liner running his ship aground off the Italian coast last year just imagine miles of floating booms being regularly damaged by passing ships.

Yes, that occurred to me, also.

This is an unworkable plan (at so many levels) from a kid too young to know better.

 

[Kulindahr]

There are other practical considerations such as ships, thousands of them plying their way across the world's oceans reminding me of the stupidity of the captain of the Costa Lines cruise liner running his ship aground off the Italian coast last year just imagine miles of floating booms being regularly damaged by passing ships.

The gyres are in general outside the shipping lanes.

 

[kallipolis]

The gyres are in general outside the shipping lanes.

The shipping lanes are over the sea bed where the refuse can be located....having been disposed of by passing ships.

 

[Kulindahr]

In T Rexx' favor:

In the simplest of terms, anything floating in the ocean tends to be a ‘party barge’ for life. What I’d like to see for Slat’s design is a time-lapse of his structure at sea predicting how fast it would be colonized by sea life—colonization happens very quickly. I can personally attest to this from recovering tsunami debris at sea, just a year after the devastating wave hit Japan. Anywhere you have seawater you’re going to have havoc wreaking barnacles. Anywhere where you have a platform, you’re going to have dead squid and flying fish stranding themselves, which will attract sea birds, and thus, guano. All of this stuff, coupled with salt, makes moving parts seize.

Little sea life attracts big sea life. Big sea life means entanglement issues. And unfortunately, sea life big or small is notorious for not doing what designers assume it will do. Slat’s design depicts massive booms sticking out of the sides in a ‘V’ pattern thus corralling the floating plastic into some mysterious filter that will separate plankton and plastic. First up, life would colonize the booms, weight it down, and create their own current and eddies around it which would affect the ‘flow’ of how the thing is supposed to work. Fish, attracted by the littler life and the protection from larger predators tend to be voracious ‘munchers’ and thus, really destructive

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1737f...-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/

 

[Kulindahr]

The shipping lanes are over the sea bed where the refuse can be located....having been disposed of by passing ships.

What do the sea beds have to do wit it? The gyres are on the surface.