The longest floating structure in world history is about to hit the ocean to fix a very big problem.
Don’t worry — it’s not another super yacht or party barge or some other contraption that will further pollute the ocean.
It’s called The Ocean Cleanup, and it’s a 1.2-mile-long system designed to collect and remove plastic from the ocean.
For two years, it will hang out in the ocean hopefully to begin undoing what we’ve done for decades: polluted the heck out of the water with plastic trash.
Might need to add some miles to that system with the amount of bottled water we drink.
I love this. Although my cynical side wants to say that people will figure they can now throw whatever they want into the ocean and this thing will scoop it up. Of course, they’re kind of doing that anyway… we’ll see.
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Definitely a step in the right direction…but I think it needs bumped up in scale. It’s like those cars that get 50 miles per gallon for gas. Sure that’s awesome but we need cars that get 500 miles per gallon. Shoot for the moon and all…
But similar to what you’re talking about is where we should be focusing our energies — we should stop using plastic bottles in the first place. It’s not sustainable to be spending money cleaning up our messes. There will always be more people making said messes than people cleaning them up.
People are gonna buy cheap, portable water — there’s no stopping that now. So we should be spending money on bottles that deteriorate a few days after opening, something along those lines.
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As far as the cars go, I think we need to move away from gas entirely. We’re eventually going to run out anyway. Though we’d run out slower at 500 mpg.
I like the deteriorating bottle idea. I think a 2-pronged approach would be good: make the disposable bottles less harmful, but also encourage people to bring a reusable bottle and make tap water available. It’s working for plastic bags up here (not sure what the situation is where you are, but here they started charging for plastic bags and the default behavior is now to bring reusable ones or do without, eg if you only have one item maybe you can just carry it in your hand). There are a few I ♡ Tap Water campaigns out there.
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My pick would be solar hover-cars. Imagine the money we’d save if we didn’t need to pay for gas or tires.
San Francisco banned plastic bags outright. I imagine other cities will follow suit if they haven’t already. I also think that the governments should heavily tax any retailer, what have you, if they use said plastic bags.
There should also be a heavy tax on non-eco-friendly containers. If you want to buy your Dasani bottles — go for it. You’ll just be charged $15 a pop.
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