Each year millions of tonnes of man-made waste/material enter our oceans threatening our planet, its lifeforms, our society and create direct and indirect losses of resources. Closing all leakage/entry points of makro-, meso- or micro-sized waste/litter, ensuring that materials stay contained and reducing, reusing and recycling of waste as a resource are a very important parts to create a sustainable society, living on our planet.
Preventing the leakage of material needs plenty of local actions on land and sea, creating full collection capacity for all waste and its contained management, people who use, handle and dispose all goods right and products which enable leakage prevention and resource efficient living.
Developing and improving right prevention solutions need a good understanding of the situation out there and to be able to link it back to its route causes but also its improvement. Marine litter hot spots in and impacts on the environment helps to focus on most urgent challenges. Identifying local sources of leakages are linked to local issues. Building and keeping track of trends of particle concentration is important to see if actions create a positive impact. Taking samples and to monitor the environment is therefore an important part to reduce marine litter efficiently.
The challenge is that taking samples in the marine environment is time consuming, resource intense and costly. Particle distribution in the turbulent ocean is far from being even. Hot spots and areas of low particle concentration can occur close by one another. Many samples and programmable collections periods and locations are needed to form solid averages. And, the ocean is vast in size and harsh in condition. There are many river outlets and coastal population areas around the world, assessing them all is mammoth task.
Improved remote/robotic monitoring processes can help to improve to observe the environmental status of our seas and can perhaps help reducing litter pollution in the marine environment one day
Preventing the leakage of material needs plenty of local actions on land and sea, creating full collection capacity for all waste and its contained management, people who use, handle and dispose all goods right and products which enable leakage prevention and resource efficient living.
Developing and improving right prevention solutions need a good understanding of the situation out there and to be able to link it back to its route causes but also its improvement. Marine litter hot spots in and impacts on the environment helps to focus on most urgent challenges. Identifying local sources of leakages are linked to local issues. Building and keeping track of trends of particle concentration is important to see if actions create a positive impact. Taking samples and to monitor the environment is therefore an important part to reduce marine litter efficiently.
The challenge is that taking samples in the marine environment is time consuming, resource intense and costly. Particle distribution in the turbulent ocean is far from being even. Hot spots and areas of low particle concentration can occur close by one another. Many samples and programmable collections periods and locations are needed to form solid averages. And, the ocean is vast in size and harsh in condition. There are many river outlets and coastal population areas around the world, assessing them all is mammoth task.
Improved remote/robotic monitoring processes can help to improve to observe the environmental status of our seas and can perhaps help reducing litter pollution in the marine environment one day
Inspired by Mr. Moore, Floating Horizon was a result of a project in 2010 and part of a final design thesis at the Koeln International School of Design (KISD).
"Of course" and like many others, the thesis asked the question if a device would be able to clean up one of the ocean gyres and of course it was focused on the most famous trash gyre "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch", which by the way is not an island.
As many research publications wrote that such a huge area could not be clean up I got inspired and asked myself "Why Not?". This project conceptualized a possible low cost and scale-able solution to collect particles. Have a look at the cost calculation from that time using available data and various further assumptions. As one device it was intended to be applied for remote sampling campaigns or arranged in a large swarm of several thousand units for cleanup actions in offshore conditions.
I carried together some information about marine litter. And I think that the recent movie "Smog of the Sea" is pretty good and a must watch.
This concept is not an existing solution. And considering that millions of tons of waste enter the ocean each year and that "only" 270.000 tonnes represent the total floating mass of marine plastics litter, waste leakage prevention and resource containment on land is much more effective than any offshore action. Exception are those areas where acute harm to life occur. Recent studies about the fate of microplastics make me also hopeful that if we are able to significantly reduce the input that the ocean will be able to heal itself much faster that one might expect (while I do not know where the undetected fraction of litter disappeared to).
Still, remote particle monitoring might be an important and valuable area for further research and development and for me personally as a nengineer if I would find the the time.
Floating Horizon was one output of larger design thesis called Mass Consumption in a Low Carbon Society 2030 (german), touching thoughts from Factor 5, Cradle to Cradle, consumerism, carbon budgets and future sufficiency.
"Of course" and like many others, the thesis asked the question if a device would be able to clean up one of the ocean gyres and of course it was focused on the most famous trash gyre "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch", which by the way is not an island.
As many research publications wrote that such a huge area could not be clean up I got inspired and asked myself "Why Not?". This project conceptualized a possible low cost and scale-able solution to collect particles. Have a look at the cost calculation from that time using available data and various further assumptions. As one device it was intended to be applied for remote sampling campaigns or arranged in a large swarm of several thousand units for cleanup actions in offshore conditions.
I carried together some information about marine litter. And I think that the recent movie "Smog of the Sea" is pretty good and a must watch.
This concept is not an existing solution. And considering that millions of tons of waste enter the ocean each year and that "only" 270.000 tonnes represent the total floating mass of marine plastics litter, waste leakage prevention and resource containment on land is much more effective than any offshore action. Exception are those areas where acute harm to life occur. Recent studies about the fate of microplastics make me also hopeful that if we are able to significantly reduce the input that the ocean will be able to heal itself much faster that one might expect (while I do not know where the undetected fraction of litter disappeared to).
Still, remote particle monitoring might be an important and valuable area for further research and development and for me personally as a nengineer if I would find the the time.
Floating Horizon was one output of larger design thesis called Mass Consumption in a Low Carbon Society 2030 (german), touching thoughts from Factor 5, Cradle to Cradle, consumerism, carbon budgets and future sufficiency.
