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Showing posts with the label Great Pacific Garbage Patch

A Huge Trap Is Ready to Start Gobbling Up Ocean Plastic “Like A Giant Pac-Man”

PAC-MAN STYLE This past weekend, a Dutch nonprofit deployed a giant floating trap into the San Francisco Bay. The organization, called The Ocean Cleanup, says that the trap will scoop up plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean. If all goes well during initial tests, the organization could deploy the craft to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vast field of debris floating between Hawaii and California. There, it could start to make a dent in the huge amount of garbage clogging up our oceans.  THE PLASTICS Water currents power the device, drawing the two sides of the 600-meter-long (1,968-foot) craft into a U-shape. That corrals garbage into its center “like a giant Pac-Man” so that the trash can be returned to land for sorting and recycling. The Ocean Cleanup believes the boom could collect as much as 150,000 pounds of plastic during its first year in operation. While that’s just a fraction of the estimated 87,000 tons of garbage in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the nonprofit