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An environmental group has announced an ambitious plan to eliminate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 2034 — as long as it gets $7.5 billion in funding to do the job.
The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental organization, has detailed the first comprehensive estimate of both the cost and timeline required to tackle the task. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of an estimated 155 million pounds of plastic waste, spans an area twice the size of Texas.
“Today’s announcement is clear: clean oceans can be achieved in a manageable time and for a clear cost,” the founder and CEO of the Ocean Cleanup, Boyan Slat, said in a press release. “Through the hard work of the past 10 years, humanity has the tools needed to clean up the ocean.”
The Ocean Cleanup’s latest system, dubbed System 03, features a 1.4-mile-long floating barrier towed between two vessels. Despite significant challenges, the organization has already removed a million pounds of trash, representing just 0.5 percent of the total debris in the patch.
Researchers note that the patch is expanding rapidly, complicating cleanup efforts. To combat this, the Ocean Cleanup plans to map “hotspots” of intense plastic accumulation in the coming year.
While the $7.5 billion price tag may seem steep, Mr. Slat noted that the cost is less than one month’s profit for Apple and a fraction of the bonus awarded to Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, last year. He also highlighted that Americans spent more than $10 billion on Halloween decorations alone in a single year.
Mr. Slat went further, suggesting that if his group’s latest technologies prove effective, the patch could be cleared in just five years at a reduced cost of $4 billion.
“We call upon the world to relegate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the history books,” he said. “This environmental catastrophe has been allowed to exist, unresolved, for too long, and for the first time, we can tell the world what it costs, what is needed and how long it could take.”
“The only thing standing between us and clean oceans is money,” Mr. Slat added.
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