A bid to clear the Pacific of its plastic debris has moved a step closer with the launch of the biggest prototype clean-up boom yet by the Dutch environment minister at a port in The Hague.
On Thursday the 100m-long barrier will be towed 20km out to sea for a year of sensor-monitored tests, before being scaled up for real-life trials off the Japanese coast at the end of next year.
If all goes well, full-scale deployment of a 100km-long version will take place in the รขโฌลgreat Pacific garbage patchรขโฌย between California and Hawaii in 2020. […]
The snake-like ocean barrier is made out of vulcanised rubber and works by harnessing sea currents to passively funnel trash in surface waters รขโฌโ often just millimetres in diameter รขโฌโ into a V-shaped cone.
A cable sub-system will anchor the structure at depths of up to 4.5km รขโฌโ almost twice as far down as has even been done before รขโฌโ keeping it in place so it can trap the rubbish for periodic collection by boats.
A fully scaled-up barrier would be the most ambitious ocean cleansing project yet, capturing around half of the plastic soup that circles the Pacific gyre within a decade. That at least is the plan.
The largely crowd-funded project has caught the imagination of a new generation in the Netherlands. In no small part this is down to the unaffected charisma of its 21-year-old founder Boyan Slat, a student dropout turned environmental entrepreneur.
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