Student Congress Legislation & Evidence
Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Good
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Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up GoodA passive collection system design would work, it just needs to be implemented on a broader scale. Slat et al, founder and lead designer The Ocean Cleanup Project, 2014 (Boyan, “A Feasibility Study”, http://www.theoceancleanup.com/fileadmin/mediarchive/theoceancleanup/press/downloads/TOC_Feasibility_study_lowres.pdf, p. 29) Proof of concept A first proof-of-concept test performed at the Azores Islands validated the capture and concentration potential of a floating barrier with a skirt depth of 3 m, in moderate environmental conditions. In addition, qualitative data suggested that the barrier does not catch zooplankton as the net behind the boom appeared to have caught an equal amount of zooplankton as the net next to the boom Passive technology is scalable and will allow for ocean clean up in all 5 oceans for a limited cost. Slat et al, founder and lead designer The Ocean Cleanup Project, 2014 The main advantage of passive cleanup is that it is scalable. Using conventional ship-and-net methods, it has been estimated that it would take about 79,000 years to remediate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Moore and Philips 2011). And that estimate assumes that vessels cover the entire oceanic area, and that the plastic pollution is spatially static. While the former assumption is perhaps naive or unrealistic, the latter is false. Ship-and net methods are less efficient as the high variability in current directions caused by eddies makes them either repeat their run on the same patch of the sea or to miss some of the plastics. In contrast, our concept uses the natural movement of the water to its advantage. In combination with the circulation period of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, the cleanup duration could be drastically reduced (a minimum of 5 years). Due to the passive collection approach, operational expenses can potentially be very low, making the cleanup more cost-effective. Furthermore, converting the extracted plastic into energy, oil or new materials could cover (a large part of) the costs of the execution. Passive collections is the only cost effective option and annual operating costs can be covered by selling plastic recycled from the project. Slat et al, founder and lead designer The Ocean Cleanup Project, 2014 The Ocean Cleanup Array is estimated to be 33 times cheaper than conventional cleanup proposals per extracted mass of plastics. In order to extract 70 million kg (or 42 percent) of garbage from the North Pacific Gyre over 10 years, we calculated a total cost of 317 million euro. In the calculations, a limited lifetime of 10 years is applied instead of a general economic lifetime (for most equipment 20 years). This is because projections indicate the mean amount of plastic mass will decrease with time. Thus, the average mass of plastic that will be collected per year will likely be lower than what has been calculated using the 10-year deployment time. As expected with the passive cleanup concept, capital expenditures outweigh the operating expenditures. The total annual estimated operating expenditures is estimated at five million euro. A break-even cost of €4.53 per kg of plastic collected must be realized in order for The Ocean Cleanup Array to be profitable. This amount falls in the range of beach cleanup costs, estimated to be €0.07 – €18.0 per kg. This is also less expensive than the plastic-caused damage to the maritime industry in the APEC region. Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up BadNonprofit organizations are being set up in the status quo to create sustainable solutions to ocean clean up using gathered plastic for fuel. Sesini, Masters in Green Management, Energy, and Corporate Social Responsibility at Bocconi University, 2011 (Marzia, “THE GARBAGE PATCH IN THE OCEANS: THE PROBLEM AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS“ http://www.seas.columbia.edu/earth/wtert/sofos/sesini_thesis.pdf) Moreover, in an effort to implement best practices collaborative private/nonprofit partnerships have been created to help reduce and prevent marine debris. Project Kaisei, a nonprofit organization that organizes plastic cleaning expedition in the Pacific Ocean, and Covanta Energy, a Fairfield-based company that owns waste-to-energy power generation plants, under the auspices of the Global Clinton Initiatives (GCI) partner up to clean up the ocean debris starting with the plastic in the North Pacific Gyre, with a yearly conversion target of 50 tons of marine debris into renewable energy. Covanta Energy uses the debris collected by Project Kaisei to “test its new waste-to- fuel technology to convert the plastic into a diesel substitute using a catalytic process for converting solid organic materials directly to mineral diesel fuel” (Covanta Energy), and to showcase how waste, and in particular plastic, can have added value if properly recycled. This in the hope that a larger scale cleanup effort will take place, helping protect the ocean and the marine wild life (Covanta Energy).¶ 16¶
Another technicality is bycatch. Slat suggests that plankton wouldn’t be collected along with the plastic, though he admits more research is needed on this. The definition of plankton is an organism that can’t swim against a current; plankton have no control where they go and the assumption that they’ll somehow avoid the current that is taking the plastic into the processing thinga-ma-jiggy is a bad one. After conducting 50+ surface samples myself, at least half of the material we get from the surface is biomass. Zooplankton is really fragile, and trying to separate it from plastic in most cases is going to damage these critters beyond survivability, especially on an industrial scale. Plan B in Slat’s concept is to centrifuge the critters out—that would rip off their antennae and feeding apparatus. Scientists, when collecting zooplankton, use live catch nets and are very, very careful so as not to damage them. Plankton biologists, needless to say, are skeptical. Though zooplankton certainly isn’t the most charismatic fauna out there (and probably wouldn’t draw the ire of PETA if Slat’s device killed them), let’s remember that all life in the ocean depends on plankton at the base of the food chain. And if one endangered sea turtle was caught up? The fines that Slat would face would bankrupt his project in a second. Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up BadA passive collection system would face eight deployment issues that would make it impossible to be effectives. Kazo, President at Wildlife Research Team, 2013 (Donna, President/Director/co-founder at Wildlife Research Team, Inc, http://wildliferesearchteam.wordpress.com/tag/boyan-slat/) Briefly, here are the basic challenges Slat’s system will face, according to MarineDebris.info and 5 Gyre’s Stiv Wilson: 1. the size and depth of the ocean gyres within which floating marine plastics tend to gather; Slat may have to moor his platforms at 4,000 meters, twice as deep as BP’s Atlantis dual oil and gas production facility, 190 miles south of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico which at 2,000 meters, is the deepest mooring in the world. 2. depth and concentration of microplastics; Slat’s system uses long, flexible surface booms, but debris can drift down the water column, to 150 meters or more. 3. capturing tiny particles of plastics while not harming microscopic marine organisms such as plankton mingled with the plastics. 4. potential for entanglement of larger marine life in the systems. Wilson: “If one endangered sea turtle was caught up? The fines that Slat would face would bankrupt his project in a second.” 5. strength and stability in extreme sea conditions; Slat’s array would not survive weeks of thirty-foot waves. It would become marine debris itself, a hazard to maritime navigation. 6. maintenance and fouling; Wilson: “Outer space is less corrosive to machines than the ocean is” and sea life grows rapidly on any surface. 7. the physical properties of ocean-weathered plastic; Slat claims that plastics retrieved from the five gyres for recycling would be financially profitable. He does admit it would not be of top quality; other sources state it would be worthless due to degradation. Recycled materials must be clean to be utilized, and this material would be fouled by sea life such as barnacles. 8. legal issues; a bewildering multitude of laws regulate the deployment of structures at sea. Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up BadOcean plastics aid biodiversity by increasing habitat for small insects and other surface Newitz, editor in chief of io9 and PhD in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley, 2012 (Annalee, “Lies You've Been Told About the Pacific Garbage Patch, 5-21, http://io9.com/5911969/lies-youve-been-told-about-the-pacific-garbage-patch) And finally, there is a class of creatures who are actually thriving as a result of the plastic influx. These are water skater insects, small crabs, barnacles, and invertebrates called bryozoans, who live on hard surfaces in the water. Some of them, like the barnacles and bryozoans, can do a lot of damage to ship hulls and have caused harm in other ecosystems they've invaded. Usually, these creatures lead a hardscrabble life, barely making it in the deep ocean where hard surfaces are limited to, as Goldstein put it, "the odd floating tree trunk, rare shells, feathers, or pieces of pumice." But now, with all the plastic floating around, these once-rare creatures are enjoying a boom time.¶ Sea life will colonize the clean up project jamming equipment shortly after deployment. Wilson, Associate Director at The 5 Gyres Institute, 2013 (Stiv,”The Fallacy of Cleaning the Gyres of Plastic With a Floating "Ocean Cleanup Array" , Inhabitat, July 17, http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/) Little sea life attracts big sea life. Big sea life means entanglement issues. And unfortunately, sea life big or small is notorious for not doing what designers assume it will do. Slat’s design depicts massive booms sticking out of the sides in a ‘V’ pattern thus corralling the floating plastic into some mysterious filter that will separate plankton and plastic. First up, life would colonize the booms, weight it down, and create their own current and eddies around it which would affect the ‘flow’ of how the thing is supposed to work. Fish, attracted by the littler life and the protection from larger predators tend to be voracious ‘munchers’ and thus, really destructive. Oh and storms? You can’t imagine the ferocity we’re talking about until you’ve sailed in full gale. The wind itself becomes audible. Most plastic sinks to the bottom and kills the ocean from the sea floor up. Matthews, consultant, eco-entrepreneur, green investor, 2014 (Richard, “Plastic Waste in Our Oceans: Problems and Solutions”, April 10, http://globalwarmingisreal.com/2014/04/10/ocean-garbage-problems-solutions/) Despite these creative approaches to removing debris from the world’s oceans, they will not be able to reach the majority of plastic which have accumulated on the ocean floor. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean. Much of which (approximately 70 percent) sinks to the bottom and harms life on the ocean floor. In the North Sea alone, Dutch scientists have counted around 110 pieces of litter for every square kilometre of the seabed. This amounts to a staggering 600,000 tonnes in the North Sea alone. This garbage can smother the sea bottom and kill the marine life. 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