Everyday somewhere between 30-50K tonnes of plastic are dumped in our oceans. That's a staggering 11-12 million tonnes annually.
Dutch inventor Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup, thinks we can tackle the brunt of plastic pollution in the oceans over the next 15 years for a mere £1BN...
His strategy is very simple: it rests on firstly knowing the source of a good chunk of this plastic pollution, and about a third of it comes from just 30 cities in mainly middle income countries where the plastic trash collection mechanisms can't keep up with the amount of plastic waste generated.
Slat's plan starts with rivers, with installing barriers to stop and scoop any plastic waste en-route, this would be semi-autonomous.
And ths plan extends to scooping up 'legacy waste' also - that's the stuff floating in our oceans ATM and piling up on our beaches...
Tech solutions to environmental problems sound dreamy - we can just carry on as usual and tech fixes all, but the problem is 'business as usual' here means a HUGE increase in plastic production - the OECD predicts it'll treble by 2060, and one has to ask whether the tech and the above budget can keep up...?
These tech solutions do nothing at all do alter the demand for plastics, which is what is driving the supply, what we ALSO need is a lot of work on generating alternatives to plastics and reducing the use of plastics in the first place!
The project might also run into difficulties with getting those barriers in rivers, local authorities in the UK for example aren't blessed with competence and efficiency to say the least!
I'm all for big tech solutions, but one has to realise they probably aren't going to solve all of our pollution problems, we need some degree of social change too probably.
