As the policy director of the ocean conservation nonprofit 5Gyres.org, I can tell you that the problem of ocean plastic pollution is massive. In case you didn’t know, an ocean gyre is a rotating current that circulates within one of the world’s oceans – and recent research has found that these massive systems are filled with plastic waste. There are no great estimates (at least scientific) on how much plastic is in the ocean, but I can say from firsthand knowledge (after sailing to four of the world’s five gyres) that it’s so pervasive it confounds the senses. Gyre cleanup has often been floated as a solution in the past, and recently Boyan Slat’s proposed ‘Ocean Cleanup Array’ went viral in a big way. The nineteen-year-old claims that the system can clean a gyre in 5 years with ‘unprecedented efficiency’ and then recycle the trash collected. The problem is that the barriers to gyre cleanup are so massive that the vast majority of the scientific and advocacy community believe it’s a fool’s errand – the ocean is big, the plastic harvested is near worthless, and sea life would be harmed. The solutions starts on land.

Read the rest of The Fallacy of Cleaning the Gyres of Plastic With a Floating “Ocean Cleanup Array”

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Post tags: 5 gyres, Boyan Slat, green design, Ocean Cleanup Array, ocean garbage patch, ocean pollution, pacific garbage patch, plastic pollution, Stiv J. Wilson, sustainable design, The 5 Gyres Institute, water pollution

Inhabitat recently reported on 19-year-old Boyan Slat’s proposed Ocean Cleanup Array, which the designer believes could potentially remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic from the world’s oceans. The project received a huge amount of media coverage, although scientists and professional ocean activists question the feasibility of the design. Now Slat has turned to crowd-funding website Indiegogo seeking to raise $80,000 for a feasibility study. In the young inventor’s own words, “I don’t know if it’s possible, and that’s exactly the reason I’m doing it.”

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Post tags: Boyan Slat, garbage patch, Gyres, IndieGoGo, Ocean Cleanup Array, pacific garbage patch, plastic fibres, plastic foodchain, plastic recycling, TED, The Ocean Cleanup Foundation

19-year-old Boyan Slat has unveiled plans to create an Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans. The device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches around the world. Instead of moving through the ocean, the array would span the radius of a garbage patch, acting as a giant funnel. The angle of the booms would force plastic in the direction of the platforms, where it would be separated from plankton, filtered and stored for recycling.

Read the rest of 19-Year-Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000 Tons Of Plastic From the World’s Oceans

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Post tags: Boyan Slat, garbage patch, Gyres, Ocean Cleanup Array, pacific garbage patch, plastic fibres, plastic foodchain, plastic recycling, TED, The Ocean Cleanup Foundation

Australian pilot Jeremy Rowsell is set to break new boundaries for alternative energy by flying from Australia to Britain in an airplane powered entirely by plastic waste. Rowsell’s “Wings of Waste” Cessna plane will fly from Sydney to London via Asia, the Middle East, and Europe using fuel refined from “end-of-life” materials such as plastic bags and other refuse that would otherwise wind up in landfills.

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Post tags: aviation fuel, Cessna, hydrocarbons, jeremy rowsell, landfill, pacific garbage patch, plastic bags, plastic recycling, pyrolysis, solar impulse

Designer and artist Hongtao Zhou worked with his Hawaiian student Erika Drake to fix a broken stool by reinforcing it with recycled plastic bags! The duo wrapped bag tissues around the broken joinery like a spider web and melted the bags to form a durable bond. The repaired piece shows the potential for reusing plastic bags (and reducing waste) while calling attention to the issue of plastic waste on the Hawaiian Islands and in the Pacific Ocean. This project was completed in Erika’s first year studio working with assistant professor Hongtao Zhou and Maria Simon at the School of Architecture at University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus.

+ Hongtao Zhou

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Post tags: "green furniture", eco-art, green art, green design, green interiors, hawaii, Hongtao Zhou, pacific garbage patch, plastic bag repair, plastic oceans, recycled furniture, Recycled Plastic, recycled plastic bags, stool fixed with plastic bags, sustainable design

People aren’t the only ones getting a jolt from caffeine these days; in a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, scientists found elevated concentrations of caffeine in the Pacific Ocean in areas off the coast of Oregon. With all those coffee drinkers in the Pacific Northwest, it should be no surprise that human waste containing caffeine would ultimately make its way through municipal water systems and out to sea – but how will the presence of caffeine in our oceans affect human health and natural ecosystems?

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Post tags: Boston Harbor, caffeine, coffee, contaminated water, intertidal mussels, marine life, Oregon coast, pacific garbage patch, Pacific Northwest, pacific ocean, scientific research, septic tanks, wastewater pollution

Researchers at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography have released a study that claims plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has increased by 100 times the amount of what was found in the region 40 years ago. Insects at the bottom of food chain are laying eggs in the pieces of small plastic that are ubiquitous in this area the size of Texas. While the Pacific Garbage Patch is commonly perceived to be an endless mess of plastic bottles and trash bobbing up and down in the water, the reality is that thousands of square miles of the ocean’s surface is covered by tiny bits of plastic that have broken down to the size of a human fingernail.

Read the rest of Scripps Study Shows Plastic in Pacific Garbage Patch Has Increased 100-Fold

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Post tags: ecosystems, pacific garbage patch, pacific ocean, plastic, plastic waste, scripps, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sea skaters, seaplex

As debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan now washes up in North America, much of it is also settling into the Pacific Garbage Patch. Stretching northward from the outermost Hawaiian Islands, this swirling gyre of trash is estimated to be twice the size of Texas and growing. Now more debris from the Japan disaster is appearing near Midway Atoll, 2500 miles southeast of Tokyo.

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Post tags: Hawaiian Islands, International Pacific Research Center, IPRC, Japan, japan tsunami, midway atoll, pacific garbage patch, pacific ocean, tsunami

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Post tags: 3D Printed chairs, Alexander Groves, Azusa Murakami, eco design, fishing trawler, green design, Kieren Jones, pacific garbage patch, recycled chairs, Royal College of Art, Sea Chair, sustainable design, Victorinox Time To Care Award, water pollution

After 8,000 nautical miles and over 130 days of sailing the Plastiki finally reached its destination in Sydney, Australia this morning! The boat — made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles — set out on its mission in March from San Francisco to help raise awareness about waste by sailing right through the Pacific Garbage Patch. The crew sailed into Sydney to meet a crowd at the Australian National Maritime Museum that had gathered to welcome them — the boat will be moored there on display for a full month.

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Post tags: crossing the pacific ocean, pacific garbage patch, plastiki plastic bottle boat, plastiki reaches australia, plastiki reaches sydney, plastiki sails the pacific

If you thought the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was a nightmare, things just got worse — it has a twin. As Plastiki makes its way across the Pacific to raise awareness about plastic in the oceans, scientists have found a matching patch in the Atlantic Ocean that stretches for thousands of square miles. The news doesn’t stop there — scientists warn the phenomenon is likely to exist in still more places around the globe.

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Post tags: atlantic garbage patch, litter, ocean, pacific garbage patch, pacific gyre, plastic, Pollution

San Francisco recently saw the unveiling of the Plastiki, a boat constructed of 12,500 2-liter plastic bottles that will be embarking on a 7,500 mile journey to Sydney this spring. Built by Adventure Ecology and captained by David de Rothschild, the vessel will brave the waters surrounding the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ in an attempt to bring awareness to the mounting plastic debris floating in our Oceans. If the 50 knots of wind and rain at the unveiling last Friday, followed by tsunami warnings post-earthquake in Chile the following day, are any indication of what the crew could face on their voyage, we wish them luck!

Read the rest of Plastiki Plastic Bottle Boat Unveiled in San Francisco!

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Post tags: Adventure Ecology, david de rothschild, green design, green transportation, pacific garbage patch, plastic bottle boat, plastiki, Recycled Materials, sustainable design