Cleaning up the oceans of plastic

Every time I get a new idea, I get annoyed. I have so many ideas that I don't have time to implement all of them.

To get you in the right mood to hear this idea, please refresh your memory of the age-old classic hymn by the Ramones.

The Romantics - What I Like About You Uploaded by soulpatrol

What I like about you, you hold me tight. Tell me I'm the only one. Wanna come over tonight, yeah. You're whispering in my ear. Tell me all the things that I wanna to hear, 'cause that's true. That's what I like about you! What I like about you: you really know how to dance. When you go up, down, jump around, think about true romance, yeah. You're whispering in my ear. Tell me all the things that I wanna to hear, 'cause that's true. That's what I like about you, That's what I like about you - That's what I like about you. What I like about you, you keep me warm at night. Never wanna let you go, know you make me feel alright, yeah. You're whispering in my ear, Tell me all the things that I wanna to hear, 'cause that's true. That's what I like about you!

That was the appetizer.

Now here's the problem: how to clean up the oceans of plastic. From the NY Times article, “ 'As I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean,' Moore later wrote in an essay for Natural History, 'I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic. It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.'”

And here is a potential short-term fix: put a thermal depolymerization system (e.g., the Changing World Technologies system) on a ship, pick up the plastic with oil skimming vessels, and periodically haul away the diesel in an ordinary oil tanker. Picking hydrocarbon off the ocean surface would be cheaper than drilling oil wells.

Some months ago, I submitted this idea to the CWT blog, which moderates comments. It never appeared. Maybe Brian Appel is too busy lobbying for subsidies. Brian! Cut that out! More subsidies for anything won't reduce consumption. Eliminating the fossil fuel subsidies is a very good idea, however, and I'm with you on that.

This proposal is not a permanent solution, as it has no prevention. Prevention will come about only through banning man-made unnatural materials that do not decompose safely and quickly. All waste should have be either compostable or recycled. Anything else is a debt that we leave to future generations.