Background:

Plastic use has become increased in day to day life due to its characteristics such as durability and low product cost. Because of increased use of plastic, it is found everywhere in the world. It causes environmental pollution which has adverse effects on ecosystems of earth including marine ecosystem. Coastal runoff and human activities add plastic garbage in oceans. There are five major garbage patches present in the world’s oceans. But The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is largest among them. The size of this massive garbage patch is about 1.6 million square meters and located between Hawaii and California. It contains about 80,000 tonnes of plastic, mostly fishing gears. In the ocean, it undergoes physicochemical changes due to impact of UV radiation, temperature, mechanical forces of ocean. This causes fragmentation of macroplastic into microplastic. So, it is a global challenge to remove it which seems difficult because of its massive size and location in ocean with environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, salinity, ocean currents, speed of winds etc.

This situation is very well explained by NASA Earth Observatory blog.https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefield/2017/10/26/plastic-plastic-where-is-all-our-plastic/

Project :

To deal with this, at present, a well known non profit company has started expedition for catching plastic garbage from GPGP by using technology that includes use of ocean waves. Later, they recycle the collected plastic garbage from GPGP. This is really amazing and appreciable expedition and uses natural ocean waves to clean garbage.

My project involves collection of plastic garbage from GPGP for further process and I found this method of collection very interesting as it involves all natural resources. So, one step of my project is completed. But in next step I don’t want to go for recycling as this company does because whatever material will be produced after recycling of garbage will cause environmental pollution.So, there will be the same situation for environmental pollution. I want permanent solution which must be eco friendly. In my project, this collected plastic garbage will undergo first shredding and then biodegradation by plastic degrading bacteria. This will minimize plastic pollution in environment. We have to collect garbage from GPGP because we cannot use bacterial culture directly to the field because of limited knowledge of field study of plastic degradation of microbes. They are potential plastic degraders in laboratory set up. So we have to collect garbage in natural way and then transfer it into a bioreactor with all optimum conditions at which plastic degrading microbes work at their best.

Resources:

1. Plastic garbage collected from GPGP as a part of expedition

2. Shredders for crushing plastic garbage into smallest fragments

3. Bioreactors with all optimized conditions for potential degradation of plastic garbage by plastic degrading microbes

Methodology:

1. Installation of plastic shredding machines and bioreactors for further degradation of plastic garbage to nearest site to minimize expense of time and fuel for transportation.

2. Pour all the plastic garbage into shredders for further fragmentation.

3. Transfer of all the content from shredder to bioreactor with all optimize conditions for growth of plastic degrading microbes and also addition of inoculum of plastic degrading microbes.

4. Safe discardation of effluent generated from bioreactor to ocean or land.

Challenge faced:

The biggest challenge of the project is to collect garbage from GPGP as for proper disposal it has to be collected and transfer to other site. The second problem was direct inoculation of plastic degrading microbes to field. Practically it is too difficult to handle because all these plastic degrading microbes are tested in laboratories with optimized conditions and lack field testing. Direct application of plastic degrading microbes will face problems like change in seasons, temperature, humidity etc. There is long list of environmental conditions to deal with. It may be time consuming and we do not have time because of increasing pollution in GPGP.

This can be seen with NASA's Scientific Visualization studio.

"NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio created a computer simulation to show how five major ‘garbage islands’ are accumulated in the oceans around the world. Plastics that find their way from your street drains into the sea collect along a pattern that has created the nasty and dangerous patches of man-made trash."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yG77rRXZDM

Possible outcome:

Recycling may not be a solution to get rid of plastic pollution. Still, there will be threat in future. Biodegradation of plastic can be an excellent solution to the problem as it causes mineralization of plastic at the end which produces safe and eco friendly removal of waste from effluent of bioreactors. In this project, keeping collection step as it is, only recycling step is modified. Looking forward to integrate biodegradation step to the expedition for better achievement for reduction of plastic pollution in environment.