Ambition to clear ocean trash with rubber fence

The fence is made up of V-shaped rubber floats that can collect and remove plastic waste at sea.

According to New Scientist, there are currently at least 224,000 tons of plastic waste floating in the ocean, including 9 million tons of plastic since the 1970s. The giant plastic waste scoop that appears in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is the object of the project. Ocean Cleanup project (Ocean Cleanup ) is implemented by a non-profit organization in the Netherlands.

The goal of the project is to install barriers made of 100km V-shaped rubber floats in the middle of the Pacific to collect plastic waste. Waste is pushed towards the top of the V, then collected and brought to recycling.

Simulate a 100km long barrier installed in the most waste area of ​​the Pacific.(Photo: Ocean Cleanup).

A study of the feasibility of the project in 2014 estimated that such fences can clean plastic in the trash swirl area in just 10 years at a cost of about 400 million USD.

The fence can only collect plastic on the sea surface. Scientists do not know exactly how much plastic is floating in the ocean. "We do not claim that the fence will be effective. We are only conducting trials , " said Boyan Slat, the research leader.

At the end of June in the Hague, the Netherlands, the team announced their latest test fence model is 100m long. They set up fences off the Dutch coast for about a year to examine its performance, as well as its ability to withstand ocean currents and regional storms. The trial cost $ 3.3 million, but a third of the funding was supported by the Dutch government.

"A few years ago, it was hard to imagine that we could clean up the ocean. But now, we are conducting an experiment to clean up some of the space in the North Sea , " Sharon Dijksma, Minister of the Environment. Netherlands, speaking at the project opening ceremony.