System 001

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Landfill accumulating in our oceans is one of the most prevalent issues being discussed today, with immense difficulties that lie in addressing how to deal with it. As this issue becomes increasingly detrimental to sea life and our environment, organisations are considering methods that can potentially clean our oceans on a mass scale, importantly without having an impact on marine wildlife. There is an estimated 1.8 trillion items of plastic just on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, said to be twice the size of Texas located between Hawaii and California (Source) and also an estimation of having a higher percentage of plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.

Not for profit organisation The Ocean Cleanup has been focused on creating a system that will efficiently clean up our oceans, having a lasting impact on the way landfill travels. They have created a beta cleanup system that can collect plastic from the oceans to a degree that has never been experienced before. (Source) Called System 001, an estimated $20 million has been invested in this campaign with a system that has a U-shaped “2,000 foot long free-floating barrier” and “10 foot underwater sieve-like netting material”. (Source) System 001 acts as an almost artificial shoreline that can essentially collect plastic particles up to as small as a millimetre. (Source) Once the system accumulates significant amounts of rubbish, ships will therefore transfer the waste to appropriate places on land. (Source) Ocean Cleanup has stated that this system is just the first in a planned fleet of 60, as the effectiveness is currently being evaluated. This incredible experiment has just been launched, but lets hope it will have a lasting and significant effect on cleaning up our oceans.

Stay tuned as we keep up to date on the effectiveness of this System 001!

Author: Olivia Panetta