A
Design
Brief
for
The
Clean
Oceans
Project
Written
By
Jake
Hvistendahl
Cleaning
up
The
Great
Pacic
Garbage
Patch
The
Issue
There
is
a
patch
of
oating
man-made
garbage
Design
Requirements
The
design
should
lter,
roughly
1.5
times
the
size
of
the
United
States
in
the
middle
of
the
Pacic
Ocean.
90%
of
this
debris
is
plastic,
much
of
it
in
pieces
smaller
than
5mm
(micro-plastics),
and
almost
none
of
it
is
biodegradable.
Most
of
this
(70%)
will
eventually
sink
to
the
sea
oor,
but
some
will
remain
oating
indenitely.
Natural
processes
continually
break
apart
and
shred
the
plastic
into
smaller
and
smaller
pieces,
much
of
which
is
ingested
by
animals
or
washes
up
on
beaches.
Green
Peace
estimates
that
over
one
million
birds
and
one
hundred
thousand
marine
mammals
and
turtles
are
killed
every
year
from
ingesting
plastics.
capture,
and
collect
plastics
from
the
surface
and
subsurface
of
the
ocean.
The
design
should
attempt
to
prevent
harm
to
ocean
fauna
and
plankton
that
may
live
on
or
in
the
plastic
soup
of
the
Great
Pacic
Garbage
Patch.
The
design
should
operate
autonomously
and
continually,
in
an
attempt
to
limit
time
in
transit
to
port
for
repairs,
refueling,
or
o
loading.
Project
Goals
Reduce
the
amount
of
plastics
oating
in
the
Values
and
Messages
The
Clean
Oceans
Project
is
a
501
c3
non-prot
dedicated
to
eliminating
continuing
contributions
to
marine
plastic
debris
through
education
and
awareness.
TCOP
has
also
been
using
research
on
the
garbage
patch
to
formulate
a
plan
for
action.
Now
all
they
require
is
a
platform
for
to
capture
the
debris.
Great
Pacic
Garbage
Patch.
Reclaim
and
reuse
as
much
of
this
plastic
resource
as
possible.
Protect
Marine
Life
that
is
negatively
eected
by
this
plastic
soup.
Ensure
healthier
beaches
and
help
sustain
marine
based
tourism
economies.
Educate
people
about
the
dangers
of
plastic
waste
and
how
it
spreads
to
marine
habitats.
Exis7ng
Design
Examples
Boyan
Slats
Ocean
Cleaning
Array
This
design
has
received
a
lot
of
attention
in
the
past
few
years.
The
designer,
Boyan
Slat,
claims
to
able
to
clean
7,250,000
tons
of
plastic
from
a
single
Ocean
Gyre
in
5
years.
This
design
is
still
in
the
feasibility
analysis.
The
ocean
array
requires
tethered
and
anchored
structures
that
many
detractors
feel
would
not
withstand
ocean
storms.
Over
the
years
there
have
been
many
dierent
ocean
cleaning
designs
brought
forth
from
designers,
inventors,
and
engineers,
but
most
of
these
fail
to
take
into
account
the
size
of
the
problem
(the
oceans
are
huge
and
many
millions
of
miles
need
to
be
covered),
and
that
the
plastics
are
moving
and
are
not
all
oating
on
the
surface.
TCOP
has
been
using
tracking
equipment
to
predicatively
model
where
large
concentrations
of
plastics
should
be
located.
The
Clean
Oceans
Project
also
recognizes
that
there
is
signicant
need
to
prevent
plastics
migrating
into
the
ocean,
while
still
attempting
to
clean
up
the
existing
problem
before
more
environmental
damage
occurs.
The
solution
to
this
problem
cannot
be
simply
engineered,
there
needs
to
be
a
concerted
eort
to
curtail
plastic
pollution
on
a
multinational
level
as
well
as
a
collaborative
eort
to
reclaim
what
we
have
already
carelessly
tossed
into
the
oceans.
