The Ocean Clean-Up Device Is Ready For The Battle Against Ocean Trash

The massive trash-collecting machine designed to clean the Pacific Ocean is finally able to collect garbage after a series of errors, its inventor confirmed it on Oct. 2. 

The nonprofit organization The Ocean Cleanup developed the said device. Its CEO, Boyan Slat, said that this success is a strong indication that their vision of getting rid of plastic in the ocean is "attainable."

The prototype is called System 001/B. According to a report, the device can pick up and hold floating debris, ranging from the size of a huge, abandoned fishing gear up to microplastics as small as one millimeter, with its U-shaped barrier with a net-like skirt. The organization also claimed that ocean animals could swim beneath it.

The prototype, called System 001/B, was deployed in "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch"—which is located between Hawaii and California and is expanding at least thrice the size of France. 

The machine has a curved barrier that traps the trash, and a huge net submerged underwater, which would serve as the container for the collection. According to the proponents, it can collect any traps, from abandoned commercial fishing nets to one-millimeter microplastics. Trapping ocean animals is not a problem either, as they can swim beneath it. 

Before this success, the team has been working on it for years, encountering multiple setbacks which Slat dubs as "unscheduled learning opportunities." The first prototype was first deployed in September 2018 but was reported to be not collecting any trash at all in December. Then, in January of the following year, the net broke free and sent back at least 44,000 tonnes of garbage it had collected already.

This version, which was given a parachute to slow down its movement and a larger corkline to prevent plastic from washing over it, was deployed in June 2019. After a series of trial-and-errors, the team had finally gotten things working properly.

But it is not done yet.

Even after getting it to work perfectly, the organization said that there are still so many things to do. The team will now be moving to its second phase to design System 002. Aside from using for a full-scale cleanup operation, Slat said that they want it to maximum durability that could survive difficult ocean conditions while still holding the trash it collected.

Once the system has become fully operational, it will return the trash it collected to the land for recycling. 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that garbage patches are formed by rotating ocean currents, which collects ocean debris to one location. There are multiple ocean patches around the world. The biggest among them is in the Pacific Ocean.  

The same garbage patch is what inspired Slat to found Ocean Cleanup in 2013, at the age of 18 in his hometown in Delft, the Netherlands. The organization said that using traditional vessels and nets to collect trash is "time-consuming, expensive, and labor-intensive", that's why they envision developing a "passive garbage-collecting system." By using advanced technology and the ocean currents to their advantage, they envision to reduce the total size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into half within five years.