The Ocean Cleanup Project

In today’s EWC feature, there is some really good news after a bit of an eye-opening video that must be watched in order to understand the gravity of today’s young innovator’s work.

The good news is, if you’re the type of forward-thinker for whom we created Ever Widening Circles, you can use the emotional momentum from today’s article to change your own habits for the better (and maybe a friend or neighbor’s). It all adds up, as you will see.

First, let me come clean about my own starting point on this subject: I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t make any efforts in my life to recycle… until researching and writing today’s article. When I came across the following facts, I was forced to reconsider that ignorant way of life:

• There is a floating gyre (a mass collection) of plastic twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. A mass of bits and pieces, plastic items large and small, swirling and churning, and growing.) And this is just one of many gyres [2].
• 90% of all trash in the ocean is plastic [2].
• In Los Angeles, CA alone every day 10 metric tons of plastic refuse (22,046.2 pounds or 10,000 kilograms) ends up in the Pacific Ocean [3].
• 50% of the plastic we use is only used once, then thrown away [3].
• It takes plastic 500 to 1,000 years to degrade [3].
• The billions of pounds of plastic in the oceans make up 40% of the ocean’s surface [3]. FORTY PERCENT!

This image shows the five main rotation points of large plastic “gyres,” or masses of plastic. In these gyres, there is six times more plastic than zooplankton by dry weight [5].

The young fellow in today’s spotlight is so amazing because he has found a way to combat the entirety of the ocean plastic problem. He uses the same currents that bring the garbage to the gyres to make the clean-up economically feasible and, most importantly, completely doable.

Let’s start with a look at the big picture, because the numbers and text in the facts above just can’t do the same justice the following, short video can in helping us understand what that plastic refuse is doing after you’re finished with it. Our editorial team struggled a little about sharing this video — but we decided that seeing it made us stand up and take notice of the issue, and without it, you might not understand of the scope of the problem with plastics.

Here’s the reality of our global addiction to plastics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN8JYhByVYg
Via: youtube.com [6]

Haunting, don’t you think? I literally can’t unscrew the lid off a plastic bottle anymore without thinking of the suffering and parts of our environment laid waste by this ever increasing problem of plastics in our environment.

Now here’s the good news: Enter 19-year-old Boyan Slat of the Netherlands who, after touring Greece at age 16, was so disgusted by the garbage in the ocean that he could not turn a blind eye to the problem. As Slat explains on his website he saw more plastic bags in the water than he did fish. Slat’s response was neither passive nor hopeless; instead he combined his disdain for the Grecian seascape with his dream of entrepreneurship and created one of those rare inventions that will surely place him in the annals of history as one of the great thinkers DOERS of our time.

Take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROW9F-c0kIQ
Via: youtube.com [7]

Can you believe how elegantly simple this is? Another example of the brilliance of youth, but one that requires all of our help: Mr. Slat’s Ocean Cleanup Array is in the development stage as of this writing and is $250,000 short of his $2 million crowdfunding goal, so you can do your part right now. Go to The Ocean Cleanup Project’s Funding Page here to show your support — the fundraising effort ends September 12, 2014!

What can we do in our daily lives?

So now that you are one of the rare people who know about the plastics gyres and the real cost of single use plastic items, you really can go out and make a difference: start making the change with your wallet and your feet on this one, folks! It’s simple: If we stop buying things made with plastics and products in single use, plastic packages, manufacturers will have to find a better way. Dr. Lynda tells me that she hasn’t stopped at a convenience store in six months because she can no longer bear the guilt of having all those plastic bottles and caps floating around her car… let alone the ocean. After seeing the dreadful video above — again, we’ve had this one in our pockets for a while, gang — and realizing that on dry land our roadsides and urban landscapes are in the same shape, the price just seems too high to pay.

Here’s another issue to keep in mind: “Recycling” is often thrown around as the answer to all our problems, but it is a highly misused term. Think about it this way: If you buy your milk, for example, in a plastic jug, and dutifully bring that jug to a recycling center, and then the plastic jug is turned into a plastic chair, that same plastic is still only one step from the landfill or ocean: Plastic chairs break easy and then eventually the plastic winds up in the landfill or ocean. Nothing has really been accomplished!

Isn’t it better to just stop buying anything made with plastics altogether? If you must buy bottled drinks in single use containers, choose only products sold in glass or aluminum (two materials that rarely wind up in the dumpsters anymore) and tell the store owner why you are making that choice. The only way to get manufacturers to move away from plastics is to demand that they use “closed-loop” materials that can truly be recycled indefinitely.

Beyond that, and on top of reducing your own use of plastics, share this important article with everyone you can. This one’s a big one, folks, for our children, children’s children, and the generations to come.

Update — October 15, 2014

When Ever Widening Circles featured The Ocean Cleanup Project — in September of 2014 — highlighting Boyan Slatt’s ocean cleanup array, and it had only a few days left to reach it’s goal of $2 million (U.S. dollars), the project was around $250,000 short.

Today, EWC is happy to announce that The Ocean Cleanup Project was able to not only reach their goal but exceed it, ending their drive at $2.1 million. But it’s not over; not until the world’s oceans are free from plastics! Check out The Ocean Cleanup Project’s website at theoceancleanup.com for details on the project, and keep donating with their permalink donation page located at theoceancleanup.com/donate.html (this link was also changed throughout the original post where necessary).

If you’d like to learn more, help fund The Ocean Cleanup Project, or assist them personally, check out the following links:

• Fund The Ocean Cleanup Project HERE
• Learn more about The Ocean Cleanup Project
• Join The Ocean Cleanup Project or become a collaborator