Who is cleaning our oceans

Humans could ingest microplastics per year through salt. Explore all our coverage related to water treatment. Share your water technology stories with us Do you have an innovation, research results or an other interesting topic you would like to share with the international water technology industry? The Aquatech website and social media channels are a great platform to showcase your stories!

Are you an Aquatech exhibitor? Make sure you add your latest press releases to your Company Profile in the Exhibitor Portal for free exposure. We promise never to send you spam and you can unsubscribe at any time!

Water treatment. If that trash stays at sea, it could wind up in a trash hot spot. The most famous of these is a place between California and Hawaii called the great Pacific garbage patch , where currents drag waste like abandoned fishing gear, bottles, and tiny pieces of pulverized plastics. There, the plastic stays. The great Pacific garbage patch, for instance, is constantly shifting , the plastic litters the water column from top to bottom, and most of the pieces are minute.

Together, that makes cleaning it up expensive — particularly as manufacturers keep making more plastic, and we keep throwing it away. He founded The Ocean Cleanup in as a nonprofit foundation. Long term, The Ocean Cleanup wants to launch 60 of these floating plastic tubes to trap marine plastics. The Ocean Cleanup plans to fix the broken part and try to address the washout.

Outside experts are bummed, too. But Kim Martini , senior oceanographer at Seabird Scientific, a company that develops ocean sensors and instrumentation, and Miriam Goldstein , a marine biologist and director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress, saw challenges ahead. Joost Dubois, a spokesperson for The Ocean Cleanup, says the team has taken these critiques into account. Using conventional methods such as vessels and nets to clean over an estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic would take thousands of years and billions of dollars to complete.

The majority of this trash accumulates in five major garbage patches. If left to circulate in these currents, the plastic will have an unprecedented impact on our ecosystems, health, and economies. It's estimated that the GPGP covers an estimated surface area of 1.

This area has been the first focal point for the Ocean Cleanup Team for research and development of new advanced technology. Their cleanup systems rely on natural forces to navigate and collect plastic waste. As the wind, waves, and current carries both the plastic and the cleaning system, they have begun gathering tons of plastic from the GPGP. After years of research and testing, The Ocean Cleanup team is ready to put the first bundle of verified plastic caught from the GPGP to good use.

The next step is to create extraordinary products that will empower activists, generate more awareness, and spark considerable progress. The Ocean Cleanup has developed the first scalable solution to efficiently intercept plastic in rivers before it reaches the oceans. As a non-profit, donations and in-kind support enable us to work towards our goal of ridding the world's oceans of plastic.

To complete one of the most ambitious engineering projects of this generation, we seek dedicated, focused and inventive minds to join our international team. The power of the crowd is what lead to the start of The Ocean Cleanup back in Follow us on social media to be part of the movement.

We develop and scale technologies to rid the oceans of plastic Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans, of which the majority spills out from rivers.