NUR FADHLIN IZZATI BINTI ZAIKHAN

ALL AT SEA : Cleaning Up The Pacific Garbage

Article: C. Evans-Pughe, “Cleaning Up the Pacific Garbage Great,” Eng. Technol., pp. 52–55, 2017.

Many people may never realized that plastic bottle they buy in convenience store could end up floating in the pacific ocean. However, this is the reality that is happening at the ocean between California and Hawaii. There are over 140 000 tonnes of floating rubbish in the sea as the result of rubbished from dumps, rivers and sewers. This amount is equal to 12, 000 rubbish trucks. Therefore, The Ocean Cleanup (TOC) raise crowdfunding event to tackle global environment problem by introducing project that resemble the characteristics of containment boom used for oil spill in ocean. The containment boom is like a temporary floating barrier used to contain oil but in this case it will be made to contain the plastic. Then, the circular sea current will collect the rubbish for an area of 20,000,000 km². After that, a boat is needed to collect the rubbish. TOC expect to collect half of the plastic in the pacific ocean in 10 years using this method with estimated cost of £265 m. In 2016, first prototype has set out with 100 m barrier in the North Sea for a year in order to test the prototype in a worst-case scenario while having high efficiency and low maintenance needed. However, this effort is not as easy as it sound because after two months of testing the prototype seems to be having mechanical issue and need further testing. As an engineer, it is important that we are more attentive on environmental problem.