Plastic Litters Our Oceans
This isn't a direct gadgets post, but it doesn't take a engineer to make the connection: The strange pizza you see above are items removed from the gullet of a fledgling Laysan albatross, a rather large sea bird that had consumed over a half-pound of plastic. It is my understanding that most of the plastic that enters the sea actually does break down eventually, but it breaks down into tiny particles that become distributed throughout the ocean—not a true decomposition.
Consumer electronics contribute their fair share of plastics to the environment. Even worse, at the rate consumer electronics become obviated, there's no reason we couldn't use biodegradable plastics or more sustainable materials. (Or at least that's my working theory; part of my work over the foreseeable future will be discovering what's holding us back.)
Anyway, sorry to be such a downer this early in the morning, but ever since I read Susan Casey's piece "Plastic Ocean" in Best Life, it's sort of haunted me. There's got to be a way to create gadgets that can be completely recycled.
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Someone needs to tell a company called Global Resource Company about this. They recently invented an industrial microwave that will turn plastic back into something very close to crude oil, and I'm sure they would be glad to know of all that "free" readily-available raw material. It's a win-win scenario: cleaner oceans and reclaimed energy.
Not that plastic in the ocean isn't a problem - but because birds don't have teeth, they swallow stones and shells and keep them in their gizzard to crush food that they swallow whole. So a certain amount of that junk serves a useful purpose.
Still, two whole lighters, a batch of bottle caps, a wire staple, a piece of ruler...
Here's an idea I've pondered for some time:
1. Various people are experimenting with processing organic trash to produce crude oil (it's simply a matter of reducing the organics to medium-chained simple hydrocarbons, though this isn't quite as simple as it sounds).
2. The northern Pacific, in particular, has tons of hydrocarbon-based trash.
3. Hawaii needs oil.
4. Why doesn't someone look into the practicality of building a ship-based trash to oil plant that would cruise the north Pacific, picking up all this marine debris, and shipping the oil to Hawaii or elsewhere?
I don't know if it would be cost effective, but it's a neat idea.
@#3: I think the problem with the trash-to-oil solutions right now is that they take a tremendous amount of energy to work. Worth it to clean up the ocean, yes, but definitely not a net gain in energy.
Plasma gasification is probably the only disposal/energy recovery scheme that's even near a state of commercial viability, as it is a self-sustaining process requiring the same amount of electricity used by a stun gun to get started. It's capable of disposing of trash more cheaply than landfill or incineration, it produces electricity & combustible gas, and leaves almost no physical byproduct. Despite this, it's many years away from replacing traditional waste disposal methods even in the most industrialized countries. So, even though there have been some tremdous breakthroughs in the last few years that sound really cool to talk about, they don't yet resemble solutions. Yes, plastics break down to smaller pieces, but those are altering the chemistry of the oceans. Yes, inorganic material helps birds digest, but don't kid yourself that even some plastic could be helpful in anything's stomach. The real solutions are boring, old, and unattractive for the most part: buy fewer things, don't build things that will quickly become waste, clean up what is there, encourage salvage on a municipal level. Posting this on a gadget blog is not much different than posting a nod to global warming on an oil blog.
Actually, most plastics do biodegrade; with some notable exceptions like polystyrene.
As for plastic to oil, I'm not sure the market is that big for it. If I recall my polymer chemistry textbook correctly, you can get back upwards of 80% of the oil energy from burning plastic.
Plastic and litter is certainly an eyesore. But plastic itself is nowhere near as big a problem as the other 95% of oil that we simply burn without further ado.
I highly recommend the following LA times expose on pollution in the ocean- I believe it one a Pulitzer. The topic of plastic in the ocean is one segment.
www.latimes.com/oceans
>
> Clipped from an LA Times article on 4/16/07:
> A Los Angeles Times series describing the profound degradation of the
> world's oceans won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting today, the
> 38th time the newspaper has been awarded journalism's top honor.
>
> The five-part "Altered Oceans" project, headed by environmental reporter
> Kenneth R. Weiss, revealed how man has choked the oceans with trash and
> basic nutrients--killing advanced sea life, making people sick and
> effectively reversing the course of evolution back toward "the primeval
> seas
> of hundreds of millions of years ago."
>
> Reporter Usha Lee McFarling and photographer Rick Loomis teamed with Weiss
> to create the stories, photo galleries, animated graphics and videos
> (posted
> at www.latimes.com/oceans ) that evoked a broad and emotional response
> from
> citizens and political leaders.
>
> John Vande Wege of latimes.com created the videos that enriched the
> series,
> which was overseen by Assistant Metro Editor Frank Clifford.
>
> "We cling to this notion that the oceans are too big to change. But it
> turns
> out they are not. The oceans are suffering from an accumulation of
> assaults," said Weiss, a long-time surfer and scuba diver. "We need to be
> much more careful what we are pulling out of the ocean and what we are
> dumping into the ocean."
>
If you are heating plastic to convert it to fuel, or just plain burning it for fuel, what kind of toxins are you releasing into the atmosphere? Burning plastic stinks to high heaven. Whatever is in the smoke can't be good.
I don't think there is an easy fix for this. We need to buy less shit, use less shit, have less packaging, period.
As for plastic breaking down, it breaks down into small pieces that resemble planktonic alga, and so it still enters the food chain.
And I really doubt that bits of garbage plastic are doing much good as gizzard stones in the crops of seabirds.
@8: I'm pretty sure the plastic reclamation processes use microwaves to break down the structure of the plastic, not just heat it.
Global Resource Corporation has the "Hawk-10," which according to New Scientist uses "1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas."
Ozmotech also has a process that converts plastics into diesel fuel that can be combusted in standard engines. I'm not exactly sure how their process works. I think there's some chemistry happening in there.
The problem is not in us. The problem causes the companies that gather the sweepings, because as anything it serves that in our homes we separate the sweepings according to the type, if these companies are not the necessary careful. hawaiianfares .com
Polymer Energy, LLC., proposes an environmentally-friendly method of recycling the plastic waste. The Polymer Energy™ system uses catalytic pyrolysis technology for transforming plastic waste into crude oil.