Pacific Trash Island Cleanup

Get a whaling ship which hopefully isn't being used for whaling anymore.

Drop big nets around portions of the rubbish and haul it onboard where it can be sorted for anything recyclable, shredded compacted into insulating boards and used to build...blimey I've done enough someone else can work out what to build.

I like the idea of a whaling ship. I recently read about thermal depolymerization. What if we used a tanker and built a TDP unit on it? The tanker would probably be big enough to support a solar array to provide the heat for TDP.

Sounds familiar.......oh yeah! Here.

If the majority is plastic then I would think they could gather up what is useful for recycling.

Recycling is an expensive procedure because they would then have to separate the different types of plastic.

They could also just clean it and turn it to fiber and make other things from it. Your bath towels are often made from recycled soda bottles.

The only other solution is to sink it.

I would imagine that a concentration of trash like that occurred by a barge sinking.

According to the estimated size being twice that of Texas, I suspect it was more than one barge sinking.

Well maybe two barges then.

I can't imagine that being a float for very long. Some dump site must have been washed out. How does something like that accumulate. I used to operate in the Pacific Ocean and had anything like that in Notice to Mariners get published.

They are always encouraging people to recycle. Well that thing is a gold mine to someone that wants to gather and process it.

Where is the scientific reason for the cause of that much waste floating around?

From the previously posted thread on this subject the plastic formimg this island is supposedly being fed by plastic trash being washed from roadsides, etc. coming down rivers and streams into the Pacific Ocean. It is apparently not sourced by the US alone.

How is it able to just come together in one place like that and not be noticed sooner? Naval surface ships have had to of seen this long before and tracked it as a hazard to navigation.

Something that size will wash ashore somewhere.

Then we can sell it as beach front property.

The ocean currents circulate and naturally cause stuff to accumulate... Never heard of the Sargasso sea?

Sargasso is in the Atlantic and there's hardly any wind there.

This plastic is in the Pacific.

My point is that a mass this large should have gotten the attention of someone before it accumulated to such a large size.

I want to see a satilite picture of this.

If this were to lodge itself on the Hawaiian Islands it would kill the marine ecology of the Island and the volcanic activity will set it on fire. If it catches on fire you couldn't put it out. It would burn for years and the pollution could block out the sun and kill off the marine life creating a shortage of food for everyone that depends on fish.

<If this were to lodge itself on the Hawaiian Islands it would kill the marine ecology of the Island and the volcanic activity will set it on fire. If it catches on fire you couldn't put it out. It would burn for years and the pollution could block out the sun and kill off the marine life creating a shortage of food for everyone that depends on fish.>

Hmmmmm. A 'Plastic Winter', perhaps? Interesting concept.

Higher up it was stated that it didn't all come from the US. That's OK then. When it makes land, only the US trash will end up on US beaches! Even better than that: California will only get Californian trash, and Oregon will only get Oregon trash, and Washington State will only get Washington trash and, and, and.......

Or they could parcel it off and build on it.

Plastic floats.

Brilliant deduction.

But not all plastic floats if you want to get technical, they make plastics in may different densities.

In this case they are talking about an island of plastic the size of Texas. That doesn't go unnoticed unless someone was delibrately keeping it hush as to not alarm the public.