Ocean Cleanup Test Removes 63,000 Pounds of Trash

A cleanup team testing a half-mile long trapping system to remove litter  from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch removed more than 63,000 pounds of trash, including a refrigerator, toilet seats, toothbrushes, VHS tapes, golf balls, shoes, and fishing gear, USA Today reports.

The trapping system, nicknamed Jenny, was sent out in late July to collect waste. It made nine trash extractions over 12 weeks, with one extraction netting nearly 20,000 pounds of debris. The recovered waste arrived in British Columbia, Canada, this month, with much of it set to be recycled. 

The group behind the cleaning is The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit trying to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. Boyan Slat of the Netherlands, who founded the organization in 2013 at the age of 18, called the most recent testing phase a success, but says there is still much work to be done.

Collecting 63,000 pounds of trash sounds impressive, but it pales in comparison to the size of the garbage patch, which covers an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France, according to The Ocean Cleanup. The group estimates the inner part of patch contains more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that amount to roughly 88,000 tons. The patch is fueled in part by a steady stream of trash and debris that flows from rivers into oceans. 

Jenny was deployed back into the ocean on Friday to collect between 22,000 to 33,000 pounds of waste every week. In the meantime, The Ocean Cleanup will work on a larger cleaning system set to be released in summer 2022 as the blueprint for creating a fleet of systems. The group expects it will need 10 systems to clean the patch at a rate of just under 20,000 tons per year, to reach its goal of reducing the mass by 50% in five years.

The Ocean Cleanup also plans to roll out new devices called Interceptors that trap waste in rivers before it enters the ocean. The solar-powered contraptions use a long barrier to direct waste towards a conveyor belt that drops all the debris into dumpsters. 

Three Interceptors are already up and running in rivers around the world: one in Indonesia, one in Malaysia, and one in the Dominican Republic.