ABOVE: The system is being towed from San Francisco out into the Pacific to scoop up trash.
THE OCEAN CLEANUP
A Dutch nonprofit organization has launched an enormous trash-collecting device into the Pacific Ocean. Following its departure from San Francisco on Saturday (September 8), the 600-meter-long, U-shaped structure is currently on its way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—the name given to a huge, swirling accumulation of trash between Hawaii and California—where it will begin scooping up some of the patch’s 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic.
“The plastic is really persistent and it doesn’t go away by itself and the time to act is now,” Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of Rotterdam-based The Ocean Cleanup, tells the Associated Press.
System 001, or “Wilson” as it’s known to members of the project, consists of a boom that floats on the surface of the water with a three-meter-deep screen to trap plastic and ...
