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Project Details

The Challenge | Trash Cleanup

Oceanic garbage patches are collections of marine debris that come together due to ocean currents; they have devastating effects on ocean ecosystems. Your challenge is to design a mission to help clean up garbage from the ocean!

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A network between: shipping, recycling & eco-friendly material producing companies, ports and NGOs, which aims to attach collector filtering bags to the ships entering Savannah and Charleston ports in order to clean the North Atlantic Garbage Patch.

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Current Situation:

Every year, 8 million metric tonnes of plastics enter our ocean on top of the estimated 150 million metric tonnes that currently circulate our marine environments. The global number of floating plastic pieces is estimated to be 5,25 billion with a combined weight of 269,000 tonnes (the equivalent of 15 bags of trash for every meter of coastline).

The North Atlantic Garbage Patch is the third oceanic trash soup in the world. It is formed, like all other 5 gyres, in an area where ocean currents form a vortex, swirling the garbage continuously once it gets there. This patch in particular overlaps a unique sea in the world, unbounded by territory, only by water and currents: the Sargasso Sea.

The problem here is that:

  • There is so much plastic that there are already dead areas of oxygen;
  • This entire ecosystem gets entangled in plastic and slowly dies;
  • The marine life and birds ingest it (biting the large plastic pieces)
  • Plastic doesn’t biodegrade: at most it photodegrades and becomes “microplastic” (1nm-5mm pieces of the same material, not the raw molecules that formed it), which is even easier ingested and gets, following the food chain, right back to our own plates (the average person ingests 5 g of microplastic per day, the equivalent of a credit card). A normal plastic bottle takes about 450 years to break down completely, so the components of a bottle dropped in the ocean today could still be polluting the waters for our great16grandchildren.
  • Plastic moves around through the planetary ocean (affecting the dimension of all the patches) and microplastic gets everywhere from the Himalayas to urban areas, being carried through water.
  • At the moment, the ratio plastic:fish is 1:5, but by 2025 it is estimated to be 1:3 and by 2050 1:1, by weight.

What has been done in the chosen area:

The North Atlantic Garbage Patch, although more recently discovered than the Pacific one, is the most documented ocean patch: a 22-year study (1986 to 2008) has mapped the distribution of the plastic debris and estimated the average number of plastic pieces / square kilometer: 50 000. The northern, southern and western limits of the patch are clearly mapped (the highest accumulation area resides between: 22° to 38°N, 54° to 79°W). This is why we were able to decide over the best nautical routes that would have the potential to “clear the sea”.

What do we do?

We are building a puzzle from pieces that are already there: transportation nautical companies, coast ports, companies that create eco-materials & filtering bags and garbage collecting & recycling companies, with the purpose to eliminate and recycle at least 1 100 tons of plastic (the amount estimated in the western third of the Sargasso Sea, the equivalent of cleaning up 2/9 of the total volume of the North Atlantic Ocean). We estimated that, with an import density in Charleston harbor of 900 ships/month and a 200 kg maximum weight / garbage bag (120 kg trash without water), we would be able to collect: 900 ships x 1 bag x 120 kg x 12 months=1,296, 000 kg/year (1 300 tonnes, which is more than we target for the first, pilot year). This estimate takes into account that some ships might not carry any bag, while others might take even two, and also refers to only one harbor, located on the 32.789°N, half distance between northern and southern limit of the area of interest (Sargasso Sea) - multiple harbors might be taken into consideration and the efficiency of the action would rise.

Budget

Collector filtering bags 1 mm diameter pore (200 kg): 900 vessels/month x 1 bag/vessel x 30$/pcs = 27 000$

Magnets = 14$/pcs x 900 pcs = 12 600$

Container rental = 100$/month

Trash removal fee = 50$/month

Recycle fee = 40$/ton x 45 tons/month = 1 800$/month

Bag sensors system = 100$ + 0.5$/pcs x 900pcs = 550$ (guarantee time ~ 3 years)

Total: 40 150$ + 1 950$/month

Part of these costs like container rental, trash removal and recycle fees will be supported by companies who will join in our network.

Challenges:

  • Standard route: the maritime space contains predefined routes and therefore it is possible that ships may not have a substantial amount of waste to be collected at a certain time.
  • Solution: the movement of the waves causes a constant spread of the waste, which on a small surface will be redistributed. The total amount of waste in the Sargasso Sea is 564.7 tons (930 billion pieces of plastic). Thus, the amount of residue will require more runs for the disposal of most of the waste.
  • Timing of waste pick up: Because commercial ships have long distances to cross, if we open the collecting bag from the beginning of the journey (at least 3 000 miles), there is a risk for it to detach and lose its garbage cargo somewhere else in the ocean, due to unfavorable meteorological conditions.
  • Solution: The ships will open the magnetically attached collector bags closer to the American shore (at a standard distance of 1 000 miles). We have chosen the most calm area of action, Sargasso Sea being known to reside at "horse latitudes" or Calms of Cancer, an area where winds are slow or mild and where currents don't reach.
  • Waste storage: Once the port is reached, the collected debris can create impediments regarding storage (smell, appearance, exposure to sunlight etc.).
  • Solution: Providing the main port centers with containers of approx. 30 cubic meters.
  • Design of the bag: The bag must be kept open during the movement of the ship at a speed of approx. 40 km/h, the material being a flexible one (filter material).
    Solution: The bag will be provided with a solid material aperture.
  • Positioning of the bag: We are dealing with two problems: using the collector bags in a way that wouldn’t detriment the well-functioning of the propeller engines & entire ship; ensuring the integrity of the bags throughout the journey.
  • Solution: The production company ensures the quality of the bags and their location in safe places for long distance travel (first half of the port side/starboard) and the collection of the debris from the ocean.

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