Plastics

In an iconic scene from an iconic movie (The Graduate), Benjamin – played by Dustin Hoffman – is advised by a friend of his parents to pursue a career in plastics.

That was in 1967, and we had no idea whatsoever just how BIG (and god-awful) plastics would end up being.

Sure, we had plastic. Our phones were no longer Bakelite. We wrapped our lunch sandwiches in Saran Wrap. But there was nowhere near the packaging we have now. While polyester had been invented well before, in 1967 no one was actually wearing it. (Give us a few years…) And the Big Wheel had yet to replace the sturdy steel trike with the chrome bell.

Plus, way back in those ancient times, people didn’t discard stuff quite as rapidly as they do now.

So fast forward five decades, and we end up with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a flotsam-chocked mass: “45,000 and 129,000 tonnes of plastic debris spread over an area roughly the size of Alaska.”

This is plastic waste that makes it way into our oceans through rivers or overboard from ships, widening, widening in the gyre.

The idea of sweeping it all up might sound fanciful. To Boyan Slat it seemed merely ambitious. What if, he wondered in 2012 (then aged 18), you could build a massive bow-shaped floating barrier, anchor it to the seabed and let currents shuffle the litter into the scoop? Despite his youthful age and madcap scheme, Mr Slat set up the Ocean Cleanup to put it into practice. Six years, €20m ($23m) and several prototypes later, the device set sail from San Francisco on September 8th, escorted by a Coast Guard vessel, a shipload of camera crews and a flotilla of curious boaters.

System 001, as the contraption has been christened, is a hollow cylinder 600 metres long and 1.2 metres in diameter, itself made of plastic (polyethylene). It was moulded together into a seamless whole from 12-metre segments at a shipyard across the San Francisco Bay in Oakland. A three-metre-deep skirt (made of sturdy polyester) dangles beneath the boom to prevent litter from escaping under it; buoyant plastic tends to float within a metre of the water’s surface. (Source: The Economist)

Unfortunately, System 001 doesn’t miraculously get rid of the Garbage Patch. It hoovers it up, hangs on, and waits for another vessel to collect it for sale to recyclers.

And sadly,

The system can do little about plastic that has fragmented into microscopic particles, but these make up just 8% of plastic in the gyre.

Still, that 8% goes into fish and poisons the fish and those of us who consume them.

Anyway, at least 92% is being seen to. So bravo Boyan Slat! What a great invention. What a great mission.

If you’re wondering what the recyclers are going to do with it:

Recycled plastic is already used to make some products, such as guttering and sewage pipes. Now attention is turning to roads. On September 11th in Zwolle, a town in the Netherlands, a 30-metre bicycle track made from 70% recycled plastic and the rest from polypropylene was opened. It will be used to test a product called PlasticRoad, which is being developed by two Dutch firms—KWS, a road builder, and Wavin, a firm that makes plastic piping—in partnership with Total, a French oil-and-gas firm…If all goes well, the inventors hope to develop the idea and make the sections entirely from recycled plastic. Paths, car parks and railway platforms could follow. Eventually, sections for use as actual roads are planned. These could contain sensors for traffic monitoring. In time, the circuits in the plastic roads might extend to assisting autonomous vehicles and recharging electric cars wirelessly.Source: The Economist)

And – get this – these roads should last two to three times longer than asphalt roads, and cost less to lay down.

There’s also another method of recycling plastic for roads – this one will include plastic in with asphalt. The mix can be customized for things like bus lanes or areas where there’s a lot of turning. Plus it helps prevent potholes, which will be of interest to any cold-weather city or state.

Maybe technology will, in fact, save us from ourselves.

Anyway, I’m delighted that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is being taken care of. (We just need to stop dumping plastic into the ocean.) And I’m glad that plastics can be recycled into roads.

Meanwhile, Nike lets you drop off old sneakers (whether they’re Nike’s or not) that they’ll recycle for you. The other day, I dropped off a worn out pair of Asics and a worn out pair of Brooks. Since I wear sneakers about 90% of the time, and since I walk about 5 miles a day, I go through about 4 pairs of sneakers a year. I used to throw them in the trash, where they’d end up not rotting in landfills somewhere in upstate New York. Or wending their way into the North Atlantic Garbage Patch – for, indeed, there is one.

Once the Pacific Patch work is underway, they’re going after our local one.

Much happier to think of my old sneakers preventing potholes than choking cod to death.