Loading player On the surface of the oceans there are large piles of plastic waste of various sizes. They end up in the sea through rivers and collect in very large areas – hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, according to the most cautious estimates – but limited by the currents. So far the only body that has bothered to find a way to remove them is Ocean Cleanup, an organization that has designed a large barrier pulled by two ships to scour the water of the oceans.
Ocean Cleanup is an ambitious plan, which has always received a lot of attention and great funding, but at the same time it has also been heavily criticized by experts in pollution and marine biology: for the actual level of effectiveness it will reach, for the air pollution that it will necessarily cause and the impact it will have on many marine animals living on the surface, in some cases exploiting the presence of plastic.
Ocean Cleanup has existed since 2013. The year before, its founder, Dutch Boyan Slat, who was 18 at the time, had explained his idea to clean the oceans of plastic using a large barrier at a TEDx conference.
The initial project called for the barrier, consisting of a series of floats and a net, to be anchored. The first prototype was destroyed by the currents in 2016 but Slat still got tens of millions of dollars in funding from Silicon Valley billionaires, such as PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, and from many people who participated in a crowdfunding, to try again. The second prototype, U-shaped, had to be carried by winds and currents. It cost $ 20 million, was tested in 2018 and was a failure.
“While it's just the tip of the iceberg, these kilograms are the most important ones we will ever collect, because they are proof that cleanup is possible. ” – Boyan Slat. pic.twitter.com/m0Ba8pz33Z
– The Ocean Cleanup (@TheOceanCleanup) October 21, 2021
The first success of Ocean Cleanup came in 2019. Since then the sieve-plastic barrier has been further modified and in the last four months the current model (the so-called System 002) has made it possible to recover almost 29 tons of waste floating in the Pacific.
The System 002 is always made of a large barrier of floats and nets, but unlike the previous versions the barrier is constantly towed by two ships in the areas where the plastic debris is collected; the ships are supplied by the large shipping company AP Moller-Maersk, one of the most important financiers of the project.
Using ships, collection is accelerated compared to that made possible by the 2019 model. According to Slat, a dozen or so barriers similar to the current one, but larger, could remove half of the plastic floating between California and Hawaii in five years. and 90 percent of all plastic in the oceans by 2040.
However, ship fuels are among the most polluting in the world and produce a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions (the cause of climate change): this is why the current Ocean Cleanup project is so criticized, especially because in the first versions the barrier should not have produced such pollution. “I think the project stems from a good intention to save the ocean, but the best way to do it is to keep the plastic out of it,” Miriam Goldstein, oceanographer and ocean program manager at the think, told Reuters recently. tank Center for American Progress: «Once the plastic has arrived in the open sea, going to take it back becomes very expensive and causes a lot of emissions.»
Ocean Cleanup said Moller-Maersk is trying to find new fuels with a lower environmental impact and added that it will offset ship emissions by funding initiatives that promote greenhouse gas absorption, but it is not yet known how. Moreover, it is possible that the emissions caused by the incineration of fished-up waste will also have to be compensated: Ocean Cleanup plans to use them to produce recycled plastic objects (with that collected so far it has made sunglasses for 200 euros), but spokesman Joost Dubois has admitted with Reuters that a portion may not be used in this way.
However, the criticisms of the project are not limited to the issue of emissions, quite the contrary. The main ones had also been made to the first prototype of the barrier and concerned the so-called “neuston”, that is the set of living beings that live on the surface of the oceans and just below: jellyfish, molluscs, seahorses and other animals that often create ecosystems around plastic waste.
The neuston as a whole has never been much studied but existing research suggests that it plays a very important role in the ecology of the oceans: it creates a connection in the food chain between different habitats and different species. For example, it is a food source for sea turtles and creates a favorable environment for young specimens of fish such as salmon and cod, which are quite defenseless before growing up.
Rebecca Helm, a jellyfish biologist who has been critiquing Ocean Cleanup for years, argues that it would take very thorough research into the ecosystems found on the surface of the oceans and amidst large patches of plastic before employing large structures like the organization's designed reef. by Boyan Slat. “We don't know exactly what the effect of plastic is on these ecosystems, but we know that it is not unique: some species tolerate plastic, some are damaged by it, others benefit from it,” Helm explained to Gizmodo: “It is important to understand a problem before trying to solve it and from an ecological point of view we did not fully understand the problem of plastic in the ocean “.
Helm's fear is that Ocean Cleanup's reef could destroy neuston's ecosystems. In response to his criticisms, the organization funded a study on the relationship between the animals of the neuston and the great plastic patch of the Pacific, which however has not completely clarified the matter: much more research would be needed, also because the impact of the project of Ocean Cleanup “up and running” will be much greater than what the tests have had so far.
According to estimates by the same organization, System 002 accidentally catches tens of thousands of marine animals every day: many small crustaceans and jellyfish, but also larger fish, cuttlefish and crabs. Gerhard Herndl, an oceanographer at the University of Vienna and one of Ocean Cleanup's scientific advisors, said this is not a major impact because “most plankton and neuston species are adapted to suffer large losses, as the currents can drag them to the mainland “.
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It is not easy to make an overall estimate of the costs and benefits of the Ocean Cleanup project. Even putting aside the criticisms related to its environmental impact, the economic ones remain: it makes sense to use an amount of money close to 40 million dollars (with the idea of spending hundreds more in the future) to fish out the plastic that is already in the oceans?
According to a 2018 study published by Nature and funded by Ocean Cleanup, the only large floating cluster between California and Hawaii is made up of 79,000 tons of plastic and it is estimated that millions of tons of this material end up in the sea every year. In comparison, the 29 tons collected in the last four months are little, and also the 20 thousand a year that Ocean Cleanup plans to recover in the next few years. Furthermore, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts organization, the flow of waste to the sea could almost triple by 2040.
According to critics of Ocean Cleanup, the money raised by the organization could be used in a better way: by organizing initiatives to clean up the beaches (something that can be done without producing greenhouse gas emissions), by lobbying governments to demand a reduction in use of disposable plastic or trying to prevent the dispersion of waste at sea.
Ocean Cleanup is also looking to do the latter with a secondary project based on the use of river barriers and solar-powered harvesting boats called Interceptors. For now, the rivers that have been equipped with this system are three – one in Indonesia, one in Malaysia, another in the Dominican Republic – and the organization would like to reach a thousand in five years.
The river project is funded by Coca-Cola, which many environmental groups consider the main culprit of plastic pollution. Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the plastic pollution research group 5 Gyres Institute, told Reuters that funds from a company that produces 3 million tons of plastic packaging every year are a form of greenwashing. facade environmentalism “carried out for reasons of image and exploited to avoid making more burdensome commitments to reduce the use of plastic.
Gizmodo's critical article summarizes the whole issue as follows: “As long as public attention and funding are directed towards costly technology dreams, companies and lawmakers can continue to postpone meaningful reforms.”
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