An ambitious project began to clean up 88,000 tons of plastic floating in the "Great Pacific Garbage Dump". On Sunday, as part of the Ocean Cleanup project, the Ocean Cleanup System 001 from San Francisco was towed to a test site approximately 240 nautical miles from shore. As soon as the system arrives there, the wind and waves transform it into a U-shape, and it will drift slowly by itself. A 3-meter skirt hanging to the bottom will collect pieces of plastic the size of a millimeter, and later small boats will collect them and deliver them ashore for disposal
During the two-week test, the system will be "closely monitored" to ensure that it performs this work without harming plankton and other vital marine species. "We want to catch plastic, not fish," Jouf Dubois, of The Ocean Cleanup, told CNN. "We are trying to solve an environmental problem, so we need to make sure that we do not create even greater problems."
After completion of the tests, the floating obstacle will be towed even further by 900 nautical miles to begin fulfilling its main mission to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Dump. Researchers will stay in place for six months to continue monitoring, but they hope that the stand-alone device will be able to do its job after they have left (see video)
Participants in the Ocean Clearing project hope that the 001 system can produce about 55 tons of plastic from the ocean per year. This will not help much in removing the garbage stain of 88 thousand tons, but it will compensate for nine tons of plastic that fall into the ocean each year. The group hopes to eventually deploy 60 systems that will extract 50 percent of the plastic waste every five years.
