Scuttlebutt: Great Pacific Garbage Patch
There are a number of things that stand in the way of solving our numerous environmental problems, not the least of which I believe is our inability to comprehend the enormity of the problems. As humans we are so very proud of our brain power. For millennia our opposing thumbs and mental capacity to organize in very large groups has allowed us, for better and worse, to overcome all obstacles on our way to dominating the planet. Currently, however, I think we have reached the point where numbers fail to provide us with any real understanding.
Say, for example, that I mention that we have added over a trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere since 1800. We are currently adding about 40 billion tons per year. Wow, that's a lot, you might say, but you can't really take it any further than that. The numbers are beyond our scale to comprehend.
Follow this: if you were to lay a million pennies end to end they would reach from the south entrance to Point Arena to north Gualala. If you laid a billion pennies end to end they would reach from Point Arena to somewhere near the southwest corner of Australia. If you laid a trillion pennies end to end they would reach to the moon and back 25 TIMES! That sounds amazing, but it doesn't really mean much because we can't even comprehend how far away the moon is at 238,000 miles. What would it mean if I told you that that trillion pennies would reach a fifth of the way to Mercury? That wouldn't mean anything because we have no means to comprehend of how far away Mercury is.
Yet we throw around numbers like billion and trillion like they made sense to us and we can make decisions based on our understanding. If I tell you, as some have suggested, that we need to plant a trillion trees to curb global warming, you might say, well, let's get started. Of course that means that every man, women and infant in the world needs to plant about 250 trees each. How about if I mention that the new F-35 fighter jets will cost over the course of their service 1.1 trillion dollars, you might shrug and say, boy that sounds like a lot. It is. It is over $3000 per man, woman and child in America.
How can environmentalists or economists ever hope to stir the public into real action toward solving our problems with the environment or economy when the public cannot really grasp the size of our challenges.
If I mention that Donald Trump has addd $4.78 trillion dollars to our national debt (after ridiculously promising to eliminate it entirely), all we can say is, well, every President has added to the national debt. Our understanding of those numbers pale compared to our national desire to keep all of the government programs that that debt provides.
Meanwhile... here are some more big numbers for you to think about. Let's go with plastics since that is the big topic these days (and should be). The American Chemistry Council has spent an estimated $200 billion on more than 300 petrochemical expansion projects in America since 2010. thus, the worldwide production of 350 million tons of new plastic produced each year will grow by 40% in the next decade while the U.S. recycles only 9.1% of its plastic according to the EPA. The much more aggressive European Union still only recycles about 30%.
What are governments doing to reverse this trend? Well, Pennsylvania is giving Shell a $1.65 billion tax break to build a plant to produce 1.6 million tons of virgin polyethylene. A Shell official told a industry conference that without this fiscal package, the company may not have gone ahead with this project. Maybe Pennsylvania should be giving that kind of subsidy to collection, sorting , and reprocessing facilities for recycling.
Nevertheless, while I have diminishing hope for the future of our planet, there are lots of people trying to make a difference and they should be lauded. One such example is a California-based company called Ocean's United. They have designed a 300-foot catamaran that can skim 50 tons per day of plastic waste from the ocean.
That sounds fine, but what do you do with it then? Glad you asked. Using a technology called Hybrid Hydrothermal Liquefaction, they are able to turn the waste into 285 barrels of high-quality, ultra-low sulfur eco-diesel. All forms of plastic can be processed.
Though the company is the brainchild of two Americans, Keith Flitner and Michel Berthiaume, the initial $40 million for the project came as a grant from the United Kingdom. Once under operation, the vessel will be transferred to U.S. registration. Their first efforts will be processing waste from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Mr. Berthiaume states, “The design of the iCat-90 Skimmer allows for complete flexibility to not only collect and process plastic waste at sea, but it also makes it possible to recycle the vast amounts of waste being collected on island nations and other remote ocean locations,” The Oceans United fleet will grow to five ships in the water by 2024 to directly clean up the waste plastic accumulating across all the world’s oceans, islands and coastlines.
Modeling the organization’s technology, Oceans United has also developed a land-based solution for recycling plastic waste found on islands nations and other upstream inland locations to mitigate plastic waste, which ultimately ends up in our oceans.
It is estimated that over 8 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans, killing more than 1 million marine animals each year. That means that there needs to be 438 of these vessels continuously operating just to keep up with the new material.
You American taxpayers are about to build a $1.3 billion aircraft carrier, but Oceans United is about $5 million short of their needs to get this vessels working. Sad.
