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October 7, 2019 07:34 am

The 'Ocean Cleanup' Device Is Finally Catching Plastic

An anonymous reader quotes Fast Company's report on the Ocean Cleanup's project's trouble-plagued multimillion-dollar floating boom:After redesigning the system, it's finally working: the nonprofit announced today that it's successfully catching plastic. The newest prototype, which sailed to the middle of the Pacific Ocean in June, is now capturing large pieces of plastic trash -- and huge "ghost nets" littered by fishing boats, a major hazard for marine life -- along with microplastics as small as 1 millimeter, the team says. "After beginning this journey seven years ago, this first year of testing in the unforgivable environment of the high seas strongly indicates that our vision is attainable and that the beginning of our mission to rid the ocean of plastic garbage, which has accumulated for decades, is within our sights," Boyan Slat, the company's founder, said in a release. The device still needs more tweaking, the team says, to be able to retain plastic for long periods of time. Another redesign will follow. But the team is now one step closer to the ultimate goal of harvesting plastic from the ocean to bring it back to land, where it can be recycled into new products. Their press release notes that their system "is using the natural forces of the ocean to passively catch and concentrate plastic, thereby confirming the most important principle behind the cleanup concept."

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