19-year-old inventor finds way to clean up the world’s oceans in under 5 years time

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By: Jack Taylor

Previously the idea of cleaning up the world’s oceans with their vast accumulations of disposed plastic material was considered an impossibility. Now a 19-year-old inventor says he and his foundation has a way to clean up the world’s oceans, and not only does he say we can do it, but that we can do it in five years time and produce a profit from it.

It is called the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ or sometimes the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, and it is a massive collection of plastic particles accumulating in the Pacific.  Other oceans have their own collections of plastic wastes as well; furthermore, most of the debris in our oceans are plastic materials that accounts for approximately 90% of all the waste debris.

Scientists have considered all manner of ways how the debris could be retrieved but there was no clear answer for it.  

Now a 19-year-old inventor by the name of Boyan Slat says we can remove nearly 20 billion tons of plastic waste with his concept he calls an ocean cleanup array.  It is made from a massive series of floating booms and processing platforms that gradually suck in the floating plastic like a giant funnel. 

The angle with how the array is set up allows all of the plastic to go to where the platforms processing centers are floating. At the platform processing area it would separate the naturally occurring life such as plankton an only keep the plastic materials to be recycled.

What is most impressive about the array is that once it goes operational it would clean up the oceans in only 5 years time!  He also makes a point in saying that due to the vastness of our oceans most do not know how badly polluted the oceans really are.

“One of the problems with preventive work is that there isn’t any imagery of these ‘garbage patches’, because the debris is dispersed over millions of square kilometers,” Slat says on his website. “By placing our arrays however, it will accumulate along the booms, making it suddenly possible to actually visualize the oceanic garbage patches. We need to stress the importance of recycling, and reducing our consumption of plastic packaging.” 

Slat was able to come up with the idea while in school, and so he wrote a paper on his concept. Once Slat's paper was published it immediately caught the attention of many marine experts.  His paper won all manner of prizes, which included the Best Technical Design 2012 from the Delft University of Technology. 

When he and others realized that the concept would work he took a leap of faith and created a non-profit organization he calls The Ocean Cleanup Foundation.  This group will focus on the goal of developing his invention, raise funds for it and make it operational as soon as possible. His concept would save numerous aquatic species of fish and help reduce PCB and DDT containments affecting all of us.  Best of all it operates on the power of the sun and by the oceans themselves.

Not only is Slat's concept self-powered, it would also be very profitable from the all the recycling, which is estimated in the amount of 500 million dollars (U.S.) per year. 

 According to Slat's website it "would make in fact more money than the plan would cost to execute. In other words; it's profitable."

Source: vr-zone.com

Contamination Danger: GM Fruit Flies Set for Mass Releases in Spain and Brazil

GeneWatch UK called for a moratorium on proposed releases of genetically modified (GM) fruit flies and other agricultural pests into the environment, until the issue of GM insects in fruit and vegetable supplies has been properly addressed.

Earlier this year, UK company Oxitec applied to make mass experimental releases of millions of male GM olive fruit flies in Spain and GM Mediterranean fruit flies (Medfly) in Brazil. The company has also stated that it plans to release GM olive flies in Italy, Greece and Morocco. The female offspring of the flies are genetically programmed to die at the larval stage, in an attempt to crash the numbers of wild pests. However, large numbers of dead larvae (maggots) are expected to remain inside olives and fruit, where fruit flies lay their eggs, and to enter the food chain. The use of a “female-killing” approach means live male larvae (and any surviving female larvae) could also be transported around the world in contaminated fruit.

“Releasing Oxitec’s GM fruit flies is a deeply flawed approach to reducing numbers of these pests, because large numbers of their offspring will die as maggots in the fruit” said Dr Helen Wallace. “Not only does this fail to protect the crop, millions of GM fruit fly maggots (most dead, but some alive) will enter the food chain where they could pose risks to human health and the environment. Oxitec’s experiments should not go ahead until rules for safety testing and plans for labelling and segregation of contaminated fruits have been thoroughly debated and assessed. If these issues are ignored, growers could suffer serious impacts on the market for their crops”.

GeneWatch UK today published its response to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as part of an ongoing complaint to the European Ombudsman about the EFSA’s development of Guidance on risk assessments for GM animals, including GM insects (1). EFSA failed to include any information about GM insects in the food chain in its consultation, breaching its own guidelines and requirements under the Aarhus convention to consult fully on environmental issues. Consumers, retailers and producers therefore remain unaware of potential impacts on the food chain, human health and global trade of releasing GM insects into the environment. GeneWatch UK is calling for full consultation, then implementation of the rules, followed by the necessary safety testing.

GeneWatch UK’s complaint also covers conflicts-of-interest on EFSA’s GM insects working group, especially the role of scientists at Oxford University, which is an investor in the company.

Releases of GM fruit flies could also have negative environmental impacts, many of which are covered by the EFSA Environmental Risk Assessment Guidance. One concern is a potential surge in other types of pest, such as olive moths and black scale insects.

Original article on Sustainable Pulse