Floating pipe named Wilson will tackle the ‘Great Pacific Garbage patch
A plastic fighting floating pipe nicknamed Wilson has begun a mission to rid the Pacific Ocean of plastic.
Pic courtesy Ocean Cleanup Foundation
The 2,000 foot-long (610m) floating pipe is set to take on the ‘Great Pacific Garbage patch’, a giant floating pile of rubbish located between San Francisco and Hawaii.
It’s the largest of five ocean trash piles on earth and is twice the size of Texas, but it could soon be eliminated by the U-shaped pipe.
It has been launched by the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, features a 10 foot (3m) deep net underneath it, which has been designed to trap floating plastic under the water’s surface.
A boat will return to the spot every couple of months to remove the debris collected, acting like a garbage truck for the ocean.
It will then return it to shore, where it can be recycled correctly and eventually turned into new products.
At present the oceans of the world harbour around 150 million tonnes of plastic, with that number only set to grow in the next decade.
Ocean Cleanup’s founder, Boyan Slat said that this type of rubbish disposal could have real impacts for climate change as well as the fishing industries and tourism.
‘That plastic is still going to be there in one year. It’s still going to be there in ten years.
‘It’s probably still going to be there in 100 years, so really only if we go out there and clean it up this amount of plastic is going to go down.’
Courtesy Daily Mail