- [Narrator] We need to talk about the oceans.
Over the past half-century,
we've all been stuck
in a throwaway culture.
Gone are the days
when you'd own a product
for a lifetime
and maybe even pass it on to your kids.
With the rise of disposable plastics,
the vast majority of what we use
gets thrown away.
Out of sight, out of mind
has been the mentality.
Except, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
All the plastic you've ever chucked out
still exists somewhere,
and much of it is in the ocean.
We're all increasingly aware of the problem,
and of the colossal gyre of plastics
floating in the Pacific Ocean.
In fact, more than one million seabirds
and 100,000 marine animals
die annually from plastic pollution.
Something has to change.
That something is the Ocean Cleanup,
a nonprofit environmental engineering organization
dedicated to ridding our oceans
of plastic pollution.
In this video,
I'll explore the unimaginable scale
of plastic pollution
and how it's devastating
marine communities worldwide.
And I'll investigate the Ocean Cleanup's
genius plan to save our oceans.
Here's a terrifying stat,
there'll be more plastic in the ocean
than fish by 2050.
It's hard even to comprehend
the scale of so much waste,
or how you could clean it up.
For a start,
it's critical to know how it got there.
Plastic, produced using
the oil industry's waste products,
took off in the 1950s.
Early plastics were heavy
and expensive to produce,
meaning little was wasted
during those early years.
Even by 2000,
plastic production and consumption
were a fraction of today.
Let's put it in perspective.
Of the 9.2 billion tons of plastic
estimated to have been produced
between 1950 and 2017,
more than half was made since 2004.
If trends continue,
by 2050, global plastic production
will top 1.1 billion tons annually,
a truly staggering statistic.
Given the sheer scale of the industry,
processing all of this plastic waste
is getting harder and harder.
It's estimated 40%
ends up in uncontrolled dumpsites,
some of it also burnt,
and a tiny fraction is recycled.
If that all sounds a little vague,
it's because it is.
In truth, no one really knows
where all the world's plastic goes.
We know that the waste
is largely mismanaged, however.
That's led to a significant uptick
in the volume of plastic
flowing into our oceans,
especially as global recycling
and landfill titans
like China and Southeast Asia
find themselves overwhelmed
by a tidal wave of waste.
For example, it's estimated
we've already seen a tenfold
increase in plastic in the oceans.
Nor is it just littering
and throwing plastic into landfills,
causing ocean waste.
Plastic microbeads or microfibers
from clothing all contribute
to the growing microplastic problem.
These microscopic particles of plastic
are causing havoc through ecosystems,
disrupting the normal biological
functioning of marine animals.
We've even found microplastics inside humans,
a frightening thought.
After all, you are what you eat,
and if you eat fish containing plastic,
you're eating plastic.
Much of the plastic in the oceans
enters five giant floating plastic patches.
The Great Pacific Plastic Patch,
for example, is bigger than the size of Texas,
and plastic has been found
11 kilometers below the surface.
The whole ocean is contaminated.
What's the harm?
How is all this plastic affecting marine life?
It's straightforward, animals who eat
near the surface
are ingesting plastic.
Because they can't digest plastic,
it builds up in their system,
filling their stomachs
and preventing them
from eating real food.
In short, they starve to death.
In one heart-breaking example,
100% of baby sea turtles
have plastic in their stomachs,
and sea turtles caught in fisheries
see 74% of their diet
composed of ocean plastics.
After all, if you're not eating fish,
you're eating plastic.
Elsewhere, coral reefs,
already stressed from ocean acidification,
are further hampered by marine plastics.
The likelihood of coral
becoming diseased increases
from 4% to 89% after contact
with marine plastic.
The plastic damages the coral's skin,
opening it up to infection.
Aside from climate change,
ocean plastics are likely
the biggest environmental problem
on the planet, possibly ever.
To call it shocking
is an understatement of global proportions.
Plastic pollution simply cannot continue,
it's time we cleaned up our act.
That's where the aptly
named Ocean Cleanup comes in.
Founded in 2013,
by Dutch-born inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat,
the organization aims to extract
plastic pollution from the oceans
and intercept it in rivers
before reaching the ocean.
They've developed several different systems
to achieve this goal,
including the Interceptor
and the Ocean Cleanup System 001 and 002.
The Interceptor's concept starts
with a fascinating stat,
80% of river plastic comes
from just 1,000 rivers.
The Interceptor is set
to trawl those rivers
in the next five years,
preventing plastic
from reaching the ocean.
The process works
in five simple steps.
First, a barrier pulled
by the Interceptor guides plastic waste
in the water towards the conveyor.
The plastic is continuously extracted
from the water
and onto the shuttle.
The shuttle automatically distributes
the debris equally across six dumpsters
using sensor data.
Inside each dumpster,
up to 50 square meters of waste is stored.
When full, it automatically
sends a text message to local operators,
who come and collect the waste.
The elegant simplicity of the design
means it can work 24/7,
relying on solar power
to keep the Interceptor's
conveyors, sensors,
and data transmission systems running.
It's also scalable,
able to be adapted to virtually
any river in the world.
Working round the clock
in optimal conditions,
the Interceptor extracts
up to 50,000 kilograms of plastic per day.
You can currently see Interceptor
working in some of
the world's biggest rivers,
including Jakarta, Indonesia,
the Klang River in Malaysia,
and Kingston Harbour, Jamaica.
It's only the beginning.
The Ocean Cleanup System 001 works
in a similar fashion.
However, after completing modeling,
a 100-meter segment was tested
in the brutal North Sea conditions in 2016.
The battering it received
from the waves meant the design
couldn't handle the stress.
It was back to the drawing board.
System 001 works
by detecting hotspots of plastic.
These natural ever-shifting locations
require computational modeling to detect.
Once located, the system moves into place.
It consists of a large suspended net,
which is dragged through the water.
The slow-moving design
does not cause animals to get caught
but still funnels the plastic waste
into collection tanks.
The system was a passive collection apparatus,
meaning it worked in tandem
with the ocean's currents,
the same currents causing
the plastic to accumulate
in the first place.
The Ocean Cleanup stresses
the importance of such a system now,
as 92% of the plastic debris
remains large enough to be collected,
which will change
as the plastic degrades
into microscopic pieces.
Despite the success of System 001,
System 002 is now being launched, nicknamed Jenny.
Jenny is substantially quicker
than its predecessor,
involving an 800 meter long
and three-meter deep barrier
towed through the water by two boats.
It moves at one and a half knots,
or less than two and a half miles an hour,
so fish have plenty of time to escape.
Due to the currents generated by the net,
the plastic is shuttled towards
a central repository
called the retention zone.
After a week of operating in the water,
one of the boats will collect
the retention zone,
permanently removing the plastic
from the water.
The plastic is then sorted
and sent for recycling.
It's efficient, effective,
and potentially planet-saving
in its approach.
You can even track
its movements on their website.
Now the team is moving ahead
with developing System 003,
which will be even more audacious than before.
It will serve as a blueprint for scale-up
when the Ocean Cleanup moves towards
industrial-scale plastic removal.
It's a remarkable journey
in just eight years.
But what do you think?
Is this plastic cleanup operation
one for the history books?
Or have we doomed our ocean
for millennia as a plastic soup?
Let us know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this video,
make sure to watch other videos
on our channel.
Thanks for watching!
We'll see you next time.