The big cleaning action of the oceans began like a rocket launch in the good old days, with a countdown and live broadcast. Within 20 years, a company – so the promise – wants to fish 90 percent of the plastic waste out of the oceans.
In the first week of January it became known that the garbage catcher is already broken after less than three months in the water.
Even long before part of the construction was broken off, it did not work properly. In December 2018, Slat’s initiative had to announce that The Ocean Cleanup couldn’t even hold the garbage. The plant is to be towed ashore, repaired and optimized.
Let's hope for success.
We at CBEI, and our students, also have some applied research projects under development to clean up the world’s seventh largest natural harbor in Kingston, Jamaica. We are also very ambitious in any case, but first, we limit ourselves to our front garden, then the island and the surrounding areas. And there is still a lot of work to be done.
It also doesn’t look like we’re going to get to grips with the problem quickly.
At our beaches, you will not find only bottles or plastic bags made in Jamaica, but also Birkenstock shoes and Nike slippers, as I recently saw on the beach.
Not so many experts who are not involved in The Ocean Cleanup project consider the information to be untrustworthy. Some were discussing the project as a whole and explaining that it will make little sense. The money invested would have been more useful in other places.
Out of sight - Out of mind
A similar media hype accompanies the preliminary end of the action. And the malicious glee is not infrequently the primary driver of reporting, right to the motto: “Didn’t we say it from the beginning?“
But with this motto, nobody has changed the world yet and certainly not for the better.
The environmental program of the UN (UNEP) should organize and carry out an act of cleansing. And the best way would be to pass the bill on to the main polluters. It is well known from where most plastic waste reaches the oceans.
Although, a bill is due to all of us.
As long as we do not have a circular economy that goes beyond bans, it will be difficult to drive our activities further than those of Sisyphus. The fact is, we pollute and poison the earth and thus endanger our livelihood and that of everyone else.
The mentality of those who throw garbage into the gullies, according to the motto: “Out of sight – Out of mind”, must change.
This attitude has to change fundamentally.