The Ocean Cleanup’s System 03 Captures Record Amounts of Plastic From the Pacific

Ocean Cleanup is back in action with its largest and most ambitious

ocean

cleanup

system

, 03. System 03 is huge, spanning a length of 2.5 km wide, and is currently capturing floating

plastic

pollution in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch located between the states of California and Hawaii I. I spoke with the CEO of Ocean Cleanups, Buy and Slat, about their new

cleanup

system

, how it works, and got a progress report on the current mission. Our cleaning system is made up of two parts, so on one side you have the hardware, the actual physical system that exists. the

ocean

and then secondly is the software, which is the computer models that guide us where and how we tow the system across the PCH.

On the hardware side, we have this 2km and 12km U-shaped barrier that is towed by two channeling ships. Ocean

plastic

rises to the surface in a collection bag we call the Retention Zone. It looks really small, but it's actually five times the length of a school bus, so it's a big bag where you then hold the plastic and then periodically, once it's full, we take it. That holding area on the deck of one of the ships and empty it and then return it to the sea so we can continue collecting while we do sorting on the ship.

The main thing that changed with system 3 is the size of the ocean which is quite large. place, so if we want to clean up the specific large garbage lot that is twice the size of Texas, we need to cover a very large area per unit of time right now, it is system 3, it is three times the span, so what What that means is that it can actually sweep an area the size of a football field every 5 seconds. In fact, since we started System 2 in 2021, we've seen a steady increase in the number of attacks we've had, so on the first expedition we did we captured, I think seven. tons of plastic and the end of 2023, so 2 years later we reach 45 tons in a single trip and this year we hope to do even better than that, the magic number we are aiming for is 100 kilos per hour if we reach that. with a decent sized fleet of cleaning systems, we can clean the patch in 10 years, sure, of course, beyond that we still want to go even higher, you want to get to 200 kilos, 300 kilos, etc., but at the same time minus 100 kilos per hour, you already know. really puts us in the realm of hey, we're ready enough to go, Expansion System 03 has added some new improvements that improve marine life safety concerns and expand the amount of plastic pollution they can collect during a deployment Increase the depth and height of the system to prevent any plastic leakage above or below the system.

We also introduced 16 cameras and what we call a safety hatch for marine animals that, if we see something happening in the system, we can activate it remotely and We can activate an inflatable bellows to fill it and go to the surface and with that open a route exhaust. We move slowly at about half your walking speed to essentially give the fish and other marine life time for you to swim in and out. way to simply introduce another level of safety, the ocean cleanup team consists of more than 40 people, including mayair marine contractors and ocean cleanup employees, aboard two large vessels equipped with some support vessels smaller.

The cleanup mission currently takes 7 weeks to complete. In the spring and summer months, because winter weather is too dangerous and volatile for such a large-scale operation, the ocean cleanup uses satellite data and marine scientists to better predict where to find and capture the greatest accumulation of plastic, we have the computer models that are fed by satellite data by measurements that we have taken over the years of where the plastic is and with that we build these advanced computer models that are almost like a weather forecast for the plastic, so who will tell us and the captains of the ships. days in advance, what are the ideal coordinates and what is the ideal path that they would have to follow and that is what I really think is the special source of the cleanliness because, without it, just crossing the ocean randomly would take a long time, for So specifically targeting those hotspots where there are areas of very high density, that's the key to effectively cleaning up the Great Pacific trash bank.

These calculations help maximize cleanup, while system 03 functions as a data collection platform and brings back weather. Valuable information to help study conditions in the Pacific Ocean as plastic pollution is collected aboard the ship, then separated by the crew into different categories, such as ropes and nets, and larger solid pieces, the plastic pollution is returned to the coast and processed. and recycled by local recycling organizations, some of the plastic is granulated to be reused and remade into new products. Buen announced that automaker Kia is getting into the recovered plastic game and working with ocean cleanup to use recycled plastic in the production of cars of the future, so a couple of years ago we launched these sunglasses that were really a professional concept that show that we can make something beautiful and desirable from this, basically, the worst waste on Earth.

Since then, we have partners with Kia car. company to convert this material into parts for its electric cars. We will have an announcement on this later this year. We are in talks with other global brands to also incorporate them into the cleanup and with that find a suitable home for all the plastic once it is taken out of the ocean, the Kia is great. I love that my wife has a Kia, it's fantastic. The oceans are not the only focus of the ocean cleanup organization. Every year, heavy rains wash debris from city streets into storm drains. which eventually finds its way into larger waterways and into the ocean.

Ocean Cleanup has been deploying a series of river interceptors around the world with the aim of cutting off the flow of PL IC pollution before it can reach the open ocean. Different types of interceptor technologies are being used with the ultimate goal of installing 1,000 interceptor barriers along the most polluting rivers on the planet. The most recent ocean cleanups. Interceptor Interceptor 19 was installed in Bangkok, Thailand, and has been operational for a few years. We started by not only cleaning up plastic that is already in the ocean, but also intercepting plastic in rivers before it reaches the oceans because what we discovered was that only 1% of the world's rivers are responsible for about 80% from all the plastic that flows towards them. the ocean, so by intercepting it in those rivers we think it's the quickest, most cost-effective way to stop plastic from leaking into the ocean, literally a few weeks ago we deployed to Bangkok on the Chao pra river, which is so huge.

Iconic river that runs through all of Bangkok, it is part of the 1% of the largest rivers and I think what is unique about this river is its width for us, beyond the direct impact we are having in Bangkok and the Gulf of Thailand. This was also a unique learning opportunity for us, uh, because the conditions are very challenging. Bok is now giving us the learnings we need because we will see more Rivers like this in the future. I was able to see Interceptor 007 myself. Located in Los Angeles, California, on a boat trip with my brother-in-law, we got as close as we could so we could take some photos of the Interceptor and I can tell you first hand that the waters downstream of 007 They are clean and pristine, which was amazing to see that you can get involved in cleaning up the oceans by donating to the ocean cleanup organization or just talking about it to raise awareness or contacting your local officials to let them know that we need solutions like these to address the problem of plastic pollution if we really care about having clean beaches, coastlines and protecting wildlife.

We need to keep the pressure on our elected officials to take action. Cleaning up the ocean has shown that it can be done and in fact they are doing something about it that will only benefit humanity and our humanity. environment if you like this video give us a like and subscribe to cnet's huge youtube channel and check out my previous coverage of the ocean cleanup interceptors that are autonomously removing floating debris from rivers around the planet right now and thanks for watching CET.