The Plan To Clean Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 5 Years
The ocean clean up known for their ocean cleaning systems. And river interceptor technologies returned to San Francisco to reveal their total estimated cost for eradicating floating plastic pollution from the Great Pacific garbage patch. And the number was staggering. We're here at the Exploratorium in San Francisco where the founder and CEO of the ocean cleanup buoyant slat is holding a press conference to announce the organization's plans for the future buoyant slab took to the stage and revealed the total cost. It would take to clean up the Great Pacific garbage patch within 10 years. Today, I'm I'm very proud and excited to, to share with you that the the results of the past 12 months of operations have now proven that we can clean up the Great Pacific garbage patch in a responsible way in 10 years time at a cost of $7.5 billion when it comes to the time and the money it would take, I really want to make clear here. This is what we can do right now. So take the average performance of the past 12 months, multiply the with a fleet of systems, let them operate for 10 years and the patch will be gone. The estimated cost of 7.5 billion would be collected by philanthropic donations and grants from governments who have a stake in maintaining a clean ocean environment. Slat explained how the plastic pollution in the ocean is costing all of us in real world dollars and cents pollution is contributing to the slowing of carbon conversion in the ocean which produces oxygen worldwide. The vast amounts of plastic debris covering the ocean's surface act as a barrier from the natural process of turning Co2 back into oxygen. Not to mention the damage that microplastics are doing to ocean wildlife and the food supply the ocean clean up. Currently using a piece of hardware known as system three, which is a large floating U shaped barrier spanning 1.6 miles or 2.5 kilometers across and is being towed through the ocean by two large vessels at a slow walking speed, collecting floating debris as it moves. So here are the twin ocean cleanup vessels which cruise side by side and drag the ocean cleanup system through the Great Pacific garbage patch, collecting of kilograms of plastic pollution. The U shaped barrier directs plastic debris floating on the ocean's surface into a massive net at the center of the cleanup system called the retention zone. Once the retention zone gets full, the twin vessels maneuver to pull in the massive bag of plastic waste using powerful wenches and a buoy system and empty the debris onto the deck of the ship for sorting and recycling. Once on board, a team of the ocean cleanup crew manually sort the different types of plastic collected into categories including fishing nets and solid plastics and place it into massive collection bags to be brought back to shore to either be recycled or pellets for use in new products system. 03 is equipped with multiple wildlife safety deterrents including an array of underwater cameras for monitoring, wildlife encounters, lighting for nighttime operations and a safety hatch which can be opened remotely to allow for fish to escape the slow speed. The system moves through the water also allows for fish and sea turtles to easily swim out of the way if they happen to come into contact with the barrier buoyant slat stressed the idea of cleaning up the Great Pacific garbage patch responsibly and efficiently and acknowledged the safety features for mitigating harm to wildlife as well as the CO2 emissions that would be expelled from the two massive vessels pulling system 03 through the ocean. According to the ocean cleanups models and projections, they estimated that the energy needed for cleaning up. The plastic pollution would result in expelling about 90 kilotons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. This would be equivalent to the amount of CO2 emissions produced by the small town of Wheatland, Wyoming and the United States with a population of 3300 residents according to boy and slat noting that the benefits of the clean up would overwhelmingly outweigh not cleaning the ocean pollution, beautiful, beautiful town. Um But um, you know, honestly, I, I think we we will be able to survive another wetland worth of uh of carbon emissions. Buoyant slat went on to explain that he believes there could be a faster, more efficient and less expensive way to clean up the Great Pacific garbage patch using computer modeling software floating GPS trackers to help track the movement of floating plastic debris and new drone technology to help identify hotspots where plastic accumulation is more dense. These models will allow the ocean clean up vessels to more precisely snake through the garbage patch following a more winding path where these dense patches of plastic pollution are more concentrated, increasing the efficiency of each catch utilizing what slat calls hotspot hunting. He believes based on their currently known plastic collection averages that the Great Pacific garbage patch can actually be cleaned up in half the time at half the cost. We predict it is possible to clear the Great Pacific garbage patch in half the time at almost half the cost. So that means five years and $4 billion. So this is going to be our focus for the coming year. We are going to invest one year to say five to put this price tag into context. This $4 billion is less than half the amount that America is spending on Halloween decorations every year. It's the same amount as was spent on military expenditures in just the last 10 hours. It's less than quarter of a percent of the net worth of the 10 richest people on earth. And it's under 1% of the net profits of the world's plastic producers over the course of the clean up slat, then put out a call to the world governments and philanthropists to step up and make this happen. Because he and his team know that this is possible based on their annual collection numbers and calculations when this clean up starts, it's really up to you. So we now call upon the world, the governments, the companies, individuals to make this clean up happen. We caught up with buoyant slat after the event for a quick interview. Do you ever see a future where you may license or open source this technology so that other nonprofits or other organizations can do the clean up themselves? Yeah, look, we don't care who does this as long as it happens. So, you know, if somebody wants to use our technology, go ahead and do it right. As long as the Great Pacific Arch pressure is gone. So, you know, I think we um we have a lot of knowledge about how to, how to use it, how to operate it. So, um and of course, we, we don't want to lean back and expect somebody else to do it. So uh but at the same time, uh yeah, somebody else wants to do it be, be our guest. Now, what are your immediate plans following this press conference with the ocean clean up? Are these ships going to go out and continue cleaning? We have one more trip scheduled for, for this year so soon. Our, our vessels will be back in the patch for another seven week uh run to um to harvest some more plastic, do some more testing. And, um, and then the coming year, we'll have a brief pause in, in offshore operations, at least in, in terms of clean up operations because we really want to double down and focus on the hotspot hunting. So developing GPS trackers getting the drone stuff sorted out. So that one later 2026 we can actually scale up at the level of performance that we, that we want to see where we can clean up the patch in five years for $4 billion like and subscribe to CNA and let us know in the comments which you think about the ocean clean ups plans to rid the world of ocean plastic pollution. And thanks for watching.