As always, PopSci brings the awesome.
Dutch visionaries want to turn the Pacific Garbage Patch into a self-sufficient, green island paradise that draws its resources from the ocean and the garbage floating therein.
“Recycled Island” would be a nearly 4,000-square-mile oasis with three primary goals: to recycle all the plastic floating in the water there, to use that material to establish a seaworthy island, and to ensure the island is self-sustaining.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is roughly the size of the big island of Hawaii. You can read much more about Recycled Island here.
Thanks to Slog Tipper lukeiscool.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is “the size of continent” according to greens, cannot be seen by satellite.
In fact, there are no photographs of the thing, and all evidence is anecdotal.
One step closer to Idiocracy.
No, the size of the proposed island is the size of Hawai’i. The size of the “garbage patch” depends on how you define it; most definitions peg it at between the size of Texas and the size of the continental US.
It’s also extremely misleading to suggest that the “garbage patch” is a visible thing at all; it’s simply a higher than average concentration of pollutants, mostly degraded and tiny bits of plastic, mostly below the surface and invisible even from the decks of boats passing through it. It’s nowhere near being a solid thing. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you were swimming in it.
A 4,000 square mile solid mass? Self-sustaining? Yeah, right.
Someone’s been listening to the Gorillaz Plastic Beach.
Attempting to address a serious problem with a pie-in-the-sky solution, backed by engineering conclusions of dubious rigor? Yup, that’s a Popular Science article all right.
“Welcome to the world of the plastic beach…”
Doh.. odonata beat me to it.
It’s all floating on the backs of dead sea life.
@5: Preach, brother, preach! I’m still waiting for my tornado power plant.
It’s all good news now, because we left the taps running for a hundred years.
Pi in the sky
Paradise…ya…