A recent edition of Paris Match contained a one-page blurb about a young engineering student’s plan to clean up our some of our oceans’ gyres. These are places that are known to have collected what are best described as islands of garbage. It’s great that the magazine felt like mentioning this attempt at making the world a better place, but the project doesn’t stand on solid ground. The magazine made it seem like his plan may become a reality in the near future, but it is, in fact, far from it.
Boyan Slat, who is going on to his second year of a bachelor’s degree program in aerospace engineering at TU Delft – which also happens to be one of my two alma maters – created the concept to rid the gyres, five slowly rotating ocean currents, of its garbage by using a device to sweep it all up.
According to estimates that Slat made with input from Dutch experts for his high-school capstone project, it would take about five years to clean up most of the gyres’ garbage.
I covered it for Delta Magazine earlier this year when he was looking for money to complete a feasibility study. He reached his goal, but also put up a disclaimer on his site that instructed journalists to not report on the project. The message has been up since February of this year.
Slat’s idea isn’t novel, and neither is criticism of it. Last April, Stiv Wilson, Policy Director of the 5 Gyres Institute, made a counterpoint to this young student’s project on Inhabitat, an eco-design blog. He argued that trawling devices, like Slat’s would never be able to match the scale nor the corrosive force of Earth’s oceans. In addition, Slat’s current concept does not account for plastic that is known to float at 100-150 m (328-492 ft.) below the water’s surface. It also does not go into detail about how it would separate out any sea life that would get caught in the device, especially plankton.
Despite the arguments that Wilson made against Slat, the reading community poured support out to Slat in the comments section. Many of the comments also wondered why Inhabitat would first report on the Slat’s project in a positive tone in two earlier articles and then suddenly publish an counter-opinion piece.
Paris Match is most similar to a Vanity Fair-type publication in the Anglo world. Their articles on culture and politics are comprehensively reported. So, having Slat’s article appear in it is quite something. The ocean gyre garbage problem has arrived in our collective consciousness.
Maybe Slat’s work is done already. All it takes to instigate change is to simply start a dialogue about the problem. I was surprised that a magazine as reputable as Paris Match decided to dedicate one full-color page in print to Slat’s project, as nascent as it is. But that’s half the battle. Before Slat’s project, the only thing I remember reading about the garbage patches was related to Plastiki in a 2009 New Yorker article. Now, I’m reminded that the problem is still there.
Perhaps the media latches on to Slat because he’s so young. He represents idealism in a cynical world. Although his campaign may make it seem like he will be the chosen one who brings Earth back to its virginal state, he does deserve a lot of credit for the buzz he’s managed to generate around this whole thing. He might just spend the next four years of school refining his concept and prototype until it sails past any criticism that we have today.
Related Links
The Fallacy of Cleaning the Gyres of Plastic with Floating “Plastic Cleanup Array” (Inhabitat.com)
Ce gamin veut nettoyer les océans (Paris Match)
How the Oceans Can Clean Themselves (TEDxTalks)
Capt. Charles Moore on the Seas of Plastic (TED)
Gyre Cleanup Project (Environmental Cleanup Coalition)
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