Ocean Cleanup Needs to Clean Up Its Hype

Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit started in 2013 by then 18-year-old Boyan Slat of the Netherlands. He proposed and developed a number of skimmer-type devices to retrieve plastic floating in the ocean gyres and the rivers emptying into them.

One of their plastics-gathering trips returned to San Francisco recently to big fanfare and a shocking declaration from Slat: The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” could be completely cleaned up in 10 years for the low cost of $7.5 billion.

Hype vs. reality

Wow. $7.5 billion would be an incredible value — go for it. Yet, as we’ve consistently seen with Ocean Cleanup over the last 11 years, the PR hype vastly exceeds the reality, and this time it’s no different.

(I’m more amazed that Slat, someone who didn’t complete his engineering degree, is able to gather together so many people and corporate sponsors for a large-scale engineering project that was seriously questioned from the get-go. He is unquestionably a terrific salesperson.)

This last trip hauled out 18 tons of plastics, and Slat claims that with 5000 more trips, the Garbage Patch will be gone.

No.

Fishing boats will continue to lose nets and other gear, and rivers will continue to deliver plastic to the seas. The answer is no. Clearly no. Remove plastics today and they will be replaced next week. Ocean Cleanup knows this. Its own research “suggests that ocean plastic pollution . . . is increasing exponentially.” Those are great words to make a problem sound threatening and worthy of immediate attention, but they also make that problem even more challenging to solve.

Related:Is There Something Fishy Going on at Ocean Cleanup?

A numbers game

Even if new additions to the Garbage Patch are eliminated, Ocean Cleanup plays a numbers game to convince people that the patch will be gone. The plastic being collected is all “macroplastic,” and none of it is microplastic. Since when do microplastics not matter? How can they claim to clean up the Garbage Patch? By focusing on the fact that macroplastics make up 92% of the mass of plastic in the Pacific. (92% is close enough to 100% for engineering dropouts, I guess).

By Ocean Cleanup’s own admission, macroplastic makes up just 6% of the number of plastic pieces in the Pacific. That doesn’t make for a good story, however. I guess we shouldn’t be worried about a micro-problem like microplastics?

Not content with this level of hype, Slat doubles down (literally) by discussing new efforts to get the job done in half the time and half the cost. Ocean Cleanup is developing technology to locate “hotspots” where the plastic concentration is higher and will focus retrieval efforts in those areas.

Related:Coldplay Finds New Grooves in Plastic Waste

The dumpling effect

Have you ever tried to get dumplings out of a pot of boiling water with a slotted spoon? It’s easy at first — you get a full spoon every time. As there are fewer dumplings, however, it takes more effort to fish them out. You need to chase them around, and they don’t always cooperate. Ocean Cleanup will face the exact same problem.

With its new technology, they’ll get great results at first, but then fishing will become scarce. Areas of the ocean already cleaned will need to be cleaned again. Half the time? Half the cost? Not a chance.

To be clear, it’s great that Ocean Cleanup can cheaply remove a sizable mass of plastic from the ocean, but crazily overselling its abilities is hype that I expect from politicians, not engineers. Get all the macroplastics you want, but don’t tell us you’ve cleaned it all up when you aren’t even close.