Cleaning Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
What’s with all the good news today? First the Trans Mountain pipeline gets axed and now this cheery prediction of the cleanup of ocean plastic, specifically, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
If things come in threes, maybe we’ll get a new set of indictments.
Craig,
Thank you for posting an article on one of the greatest and most neglected areas of human impact on the natural world.
No one would (well, except for the usual rabid cranks) deny how useful and indispensable plastic products have become to modern civilization. Unfortunately, the problem of disposal of obsolete plastic products hasn’t kept paced with the development of plastic products.
For the oceans and oceanic life, plastics have become an unprecedented disaster, largely ignored by most governments. As a result, environmental actions to reduce the effects of plastic in the oceans has largely been left to a coalition of well meaning environmental activists, scientists, opportunist politicians, etc.
Lot’s of useless huffing and puffing about “banning” this or that plastic product, but no real action.
There’s not just one of these giant piles of oceanic rubbish, but five! The Great Pacific patch is only the best known.
I applaud the efforts of organizations such as ‘Ocean Cleanup’, although I have my doubts about the effectiveness of the technology, at least it’s a positive step in the right direction.
Promising research is also being undertaken to develop microbes that munch plastic, neutralize toxins naturally.
Micro-biotic research isn’t new, and has a long history of disappointing results when transferring laboratory microbe technology to practical use.
Recently, researchers at Kyoto University have discovered a naturally evolved plastic munching microbe able to live on a diet of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). This bacteria named Ideonella sakaiensis represents a real breakthrough.
The problem of persuading the bacteria to adapt to a marine environment isn’t easy, evolution takes time and attempts to ‘speed up’ evolution are not easily accomplished. However, early indications show the bacteria may be able to make the transition without any harmful unintended environmental consequences.
It’s very encouraging to see efforts to reduce the piles of oceanic garbage are beginning to gain momentum, despite the pitifully small budgets governments are devoting to such efforts.
Well done Craig, for highlighting an all too neglected area of environmental concern.
Hopefully, this bacteria can adapt to marine life before we kill off all marine life. If not, I fear we will have doomed our species, and our planet, to extinction. We still have around 100+ years though, so we still have a chance.