Ocean rangers| Trash Cleanup
Project Details
Awards & Nominations
Ocean rangers has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
The Challenge | Trash Cleanup
E-WAV
A fleet of marine drones that will collect mesoplastic out of the great pacific garbage patch and deposit into a collection point to be later transported to the coast
It’s estimated that up to 14 million tons of plastic enters the ocean each year!
This waste that ends up in the ocean degrades into smaller pieces of plastic under the effects of sun and waves, becoming more and more difficult to catch, and posing a bigger threat to marine life.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is the largest of the five offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. It is located halfway between Hawaii and California. It’s 3 times the size of France and has an estimated weight of 80.000 tones.
It’s estimated that there is 180x more plastic than food at the surface of the great pacific garbage patch. This directly affects marine life, that confuses the debris and consumes it as food, passing the plastic content which is highly pollutant to it’s predator and eventually to human beings, posing not only a huge environmental threat, but also a health and economic threat, especially to coastal cities.
The United Nations reported that the approximate environmental damage caused by plastic to marine ecosystems represents 13 billion USD. This figure included the cost of beach cleanups and the financial loss incurred by fisheries.
The solution? Several autonomous aquatic drones, working to collect The plastic particles which are later placed on several collection points that will be in charge to hold up the whole set of debris that will form a more manageable patch, to be later easily transported to the coast.
The aquatic drones would be fueled by solar energy, have several sensors that will collect data, will be connected by a LoRaWAN network and use NASA's data to determine the best collection route based on wind and ocean currents speed among other factors.
Once the collection point is full, it will send a signal that will allow passing commercial ships (who can be given financial incentives to do so) or the organization’s own ship to attach the collecting net and drag it to the coast. By using commercial ships we would be reducing our carbon foot print.
As we recognize this is not an easy solution, we want to focus our efforts in one of the four categories of plastic that can be found in the great pacific garbage patch: Mesoplastics
Why mesoplastics? It makes up to 17% of the total mass of the patch, which corresponds to 13.600 tons of plastic waste, that could be later turned into microplastic being a lot harder to address the issue. We want to be there before that happens!
A 2015 study estimated that there's between 15 and 51 trillion pieces of microplastic in the world's oceans, weighing up to 261,000 tons. As more and more plastics are discarded into the environment, microplastic concentration in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will only continue to increase.
Each drone is expected to collect at least 300 kg of mesoplastic a day, considering an initial fleet of 10 drones, by the end of a whole year it will mean a clean-up of 8% of the total mass of mesoplastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If we are succesful ad doubling the size of the fleet each year, by the end of the 5th year we would be able to collect over 34.000 tones of waste off the water.
The project would be founded by governmental organizations of coastal countries and by selling the waste to be given a second use.
The team:
Fabio Bondiman - Comercial Engineer
Lucia Gil - Industrial Designer
Manuel Aquino - Mechanical Engineer
Leandro Barros - Visual Designer
Felix Zarate - Electric Engineer
Luis Mencia - Computer Engineer
NASA resources:
We will use NASA datasets to plot the collection path of the drones, using currents, wind, temperature, etc, that can be used to better navigate the autonomous fleet.
Our team will detect images of plastics, garbage, metal, paper, glass and cardboard in the ocean to allow the collection and reduction of these materials, particularly plastic, in the ocean waters thanks to image recognition.
https://github.com/antiplasti/Plastic-Detection-Model
Repository:
https://github.com/lcmencia/ocean-rangers
Prototype:
https://github.com/lcmencia/ocean-rangers/tree/master/docs/prototype
Sources:
Laurent C. M. Lebreton, et al., “Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic,” Scientific Reports 8, no. 4666 (March 2018), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-22939-w
Laurent C. M. Lebreton, et al., “River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans,” Nature Communications 8, no. 15611 (June 2017), http://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611
Qiqing Chen, et al., “Pollutants in Plastics within the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre,” Environmental Science and Technology 52, no. 2 (November 2017): 446-456, http://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b04682
Julia Reisser, et al., “The vertical distribution of buoyant plastics at sea: an observational study in the North Atlantic Gyre,” Biogeosciences 12 (February 2015): 1249-1256, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-1249-2015
Merel Kooi, et al., “The effect of particle properties on the depth profile of buoyant plastics in the ocean,” Scientific Reports 92, 1-2 (March 2015): 170-179, http://doi.org/10.1038/srep33882
Sarah Gall, Richard C. Thompson, “The impact of debris on marine life,” Marine Pollution Bulletin 6, no. 33882 (October 2016), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.12.041
Julie Raynaud, “Valuing Plastics: The Business Case for Measuring, Managing and Disclosing Plastic Use in the Consumer Goods Industry,” Trucost, UNEP, 2014
https://www.worldfinance.com/markets/counting-the-cost-of-plastic-pollution