Waste plastic pollutes the world’s oceans in huge quantities, threatening marine life, ecosystems and human health. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) contains the largest concentration of such waste – around 100 million kg – which is drawn in and retained by the ocean gyre’s circular currents. Although contained, the pollution is spread over an area three times the size of France, so removing it is an immense challenge.

Ocean plastic debris and microplastic particles disrupt marine ecosystems, reduce biodiversity and impair carbon sequestration. Economically, the cost to industries such as fishing, shipping and tourism exceeds USD 500 billion annually. Microplastics entering the food chain could also affect human health and increase risks of cancer, reduced fertility, heart attack or stroke. Regulatory pressure, global protests, media scrutiny and potential litigation all signal an urgent  need to reverse the growth of plastic pollution and clean up our oceans.

The Ocean Cleanup plans to clean 80% of the GPGP within five years, and it has pioneered technology to clean the waste held in such gyres. 

Its extraction system is already proving successful, and a single system has removed more than 465,000 kg of GPGP waste in the years since its inception. However, that represents only 0.4% of the total, so the process must be scaled up and accelerated to increase its extraction rate which could achieve a cleanup in five years.

Refinements to the hardware will increase its capacity for waste extraction, while improved monitoring and modelling software will predict waste hotspots more effectively, to increase the extraction achieved in each mission. Relocation of operating bases, nearer to the GPGP, will reduce unproductive travel time and increase operational efficiency, while increasing the fleet of systems to ten or more will dramatically increase the overall cleanup rate.

Speaker: Mathijs Campman - Head of Offshore Project (The Ocean Cleanup)

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