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Solving one of the world’s biggest environmental problems is not so expensive any more

United States Architecture News - Sep 10, 2015 - 13:30   4094 views

Solving one of the world’s biggest environmental problems is not so expensive any more

The Ocean Cleanup Array aims to deal with plastic pollution. Credit The Ocean Cleanup (image via nytimes.com)

Is there a safe, efficient and (relatively) inexpensive way of solving one of the world’s biggest environmental problems — by cleaning up the plastic trash that is polluting the oceans? Two years ago, Boyan Slat, a Dutch engineering student, assembled a team of 100 scientists and engineers to try to design one.

Their proposed solution, the Ocean Cleanup Array, is to start a two-year test next spring in the water near Tsushima, an island in the Korea Strait between Japan and South Korea. Financed by $2.2 million of crowd-funding, the test will construct a 2,000-meter-long barrier, the world’s largest floating structure, at the center of one of the circular currents where plastic debris has congregated to form a gigantic “garbage patch.”.....Continue Reading

> via international.nytimes.com