Comments on: So we’ve got this trash-filled gyre, right? Can we fix it?

By: Mark Smith

Mark Smith — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 03:53:02 +0000

One solution may be to install a plasma furnace on a boat and incinerate the plastic. A plasma furnace will burn anything, even concrete, and reduces the material to its constituent elements.
This type of incinerator vents no waste gases to the atmosphere, but produces its own power and there may even be enough lefover syngas to sell off for energy on the mainland, or to power the boat.
Plastics are mainly carbon and hydrogen, so the leftover solid waste would be carbon, which could also be on-sold for generating energy or fuelling barbeques etc.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:02:23 +0000

Who wants a Fuck Buddy ?

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:38:14 +0000

I like the giant barge idea. Even if it eliminates the wildlife in the area, the wildlife can and will grow back, especially if there is a healthy ecosystem to live in.
It’s sort of like burning a patch of forest to prevent a bigger wildfire later. You damage and destroy some, but it promotes a healthier growth overall.

By: marc daquila

marc daquila — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:13:19 +0000

There is no one solution. Everything, even if its not the best idea needs to be started now. Inertia will be broken by action which will promote innovations

By: JAVIN

JAVIN — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:30:42 +0000

A possible means to clean up the mess would be to create solar powered trawlers that would slowly collect the debris. Slow movement could reduce the bycatch of animals. Perhaps the plastic catch could be dragged on deck and melted together, or bound togther with a bailing type mechanism. The system should melt plastic on board and make the bailing material. If it would not pose a leeching problem it coul dbe floated to form a bigger remediation island.

By: kai chow

kai chow — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:25:06 +0000

hello i am a 15 year old student at Kihei charter school on Maui. I was reading your blog and decided to do a little research of my own and i think that i have found that plastic eating microbe that you are looking for. Only catch is that the optimal degrading temperature is about 43 degrees. Take a look at the website

http://news.therecord.com/article/354044

By: Rich Owen

Rich Owen — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:05:45 +0000

Aloha
Great to see that the minds are thinking on how to clean up the North Pacific Gyre. It needs to be addressed, soon. We can all agree that it needs to be done. It will take a world of people to clean it up. After all it took a world of people to make the mess. It’s not so important that we know how at this very moment, but to get started. We are forming a non profit to do the cleanup and we could use your time, effort and expertise. What ever it may be.

I look forward to the journey, this will be one of the greatest undertakings in history.

Aloha
Rich

By: Edith

Edith — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:07:37 +0000

Introduction of bio-engineered organisms is definitely a tricky proposition. I spend a lot of time trying to think of ways to engineer in an “off” switch, but I recognize the limitations of that as well (like what if the organism mutates to escape the “off” switch). My point is, it is a long way from what can be done in the lab to having something that would actually be useful in the real world and I should be careful not to leave the impression that we don’t know that.

By: Miriam Goldstein

Miriam Goldstein — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:34:02 +0000

Thanks for the invite, Anna! Sadly, we will be somewhere over the Midwest that day as we fly back from the East Coast.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:20:05 +0000

Hey Oysters Garter, Great blog! Appreciate your looking into the cleanup feasibility....I recently returned from a 4,000 mile research voyage through the gyre, and now "get" why the cleanup idea is so challenging. Its truly massive, and the debris VERY spread out.....Just wrote about it here. You all should come up June 1st for the launch of Junk, a raft built of 15,000 plastic bottles, headed for Hawaii....love to have you there!