Off the wire
• Study questions effectiveness of physical therapy for Parkinson's patients  • Feature: Chinese agricultural technology helps improve Tanzanian farmers' lives  • Ukraine says to raise tariffs for Russian gas transit by half  • Leading UN water supply agency announces appointment of new chair  • Polish PM defends reforms in EP meeting  • LME base metals prices increase on Tuesday  • 1st LD Writethru: Gold falls as global stocks bounce back  • UN chief announces advocates to support sustainable development goals  • Urgent: Gold falls on investor confidence  • British FTSE 100 rises 1.68 pct on Tuesday  
You are here: 　 Home

Placing plastic collectors near coasts efficient in cleaning up ocean plastics: research

Xinhua, January 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

The most efficient way to clean up ocean plastics and avoid harming ecosystems is to place plastic collectors near coasts, according to a new study published Tuesday by the Imperial College London.

Plastics including bags, bottle caps and plastic fibers from synthetic clothes wash out into the oceans from urban rivers, sewers and waste deposits, which has become an increasing problem to the ocean's ecosystems. Larger plastics are broken down into smaller fragments that can persist for hundreds or even thousands of years.

One area of open ocean in the North Pacific has an unusually large collection of microscopic plastics, or microplastics, and is known as the Great Pacific garbage patch. The patch is enclosed by ocean currents that concentrate the plastics into an area estimated to be larger than twice the size of Britain.

There is now a project called the Ocean Cleanup that plans to deploy plastic collectors to clean up the region. But a new analysis by researchers from the Imperial College London suggests that targeting the patch is not the most efficient way to clean up the oceans.

Using a model of ocean plastic movements, researchers found that placing plastic collectors like those proposed by the Ocean Cleanup project around coasts was more beneficial than placing them all inside the patch. The project proposes a system of floating barriers and platforms to concentrate and collect plastics and remove them.

For a 10-year project between 2015 and 2025, placing collectors near coasts would remove 31 percent of microplastics, while only 17 percent would be removed, with all the collectors in the patch, according to the study.

"It makes sense to remove plastics where they first enter the ocean around dense coastal economic and population centers," said Dr. Erik van Sebille from Imperial College London, one of the authors of the study.

"It also means you can remove the plastics before they have had a chance to do any harm. Plastics in the patch have traveled a long way and potentially already done a lot of harm," he added. Endit